From what I understand most of the cars that are being stolen are exported to other countries. How is it so easy to export a stolen vehicle, and why isn’t a title required?
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A car is stolen in the USA, put in an export container, loaded on a ship and sent overseas. The car can then be registered in that other country because the car isnt listed as stolen there.
The computer systems in one country dont link to another countries.
In my country (the UK), my understanding is most are on a ship before they are even reported stolen. Even then the amount of goods examined before leaving the country is minimal because there’s only so many people to do it compared to the amount of goods being exported. Even if cars are declared as cars, they likely only examine the ones declared as very high value, or technology to detect cars where cars are not declared (like in a container).
They might use a title for a car that is not stolen. The customs officials might not have time to check the VIN of all cars. They might also use fake papers as not every customs check have access to every database with car registrations and stolen cars. Smugglers know these gaps in the customs network and might have created some themselves. Another thing they can do is to load the cars into containers and then write a fake manifest. As long as the customs do not have the resources to open all the containers and check the content they can export cars this way.
In Australia there are ZERO checks made on a vehicle leaving the country. Customs only care about what comes in.
Basically the idea that every container is scanned/inspected is a complete myth.
In truth they target random containers from known hot spots. That’s it.
Put simply: authorities have no idea what is in containers. The container is loaded onto a truck miles away from a port. The truck drives in to the shipping yards and from the shipping systems point of view it’s a weight and a destination and the cranes put it when it has to go. Same at the other end.
This idea shown in movies where they literally have dodgy fred working at the boat yard hustling to sneak cars into containers and onto ships is just holywood.
A lot of the time, specially within the EU where it’s easier to go from country to country, if they want to really mess with the quick checks, they’ll simply do a respray or swap body panels if it’s worth it. Stealing 2 cars of different colors, changing both their colors, and going to different areas that don’t necessarily have that car associated with a stolen car (also stuff like touring vs standard), can throw off the quick checks, that stop the deeper checks into VIN etc.
You can also get written off high value cars pretty cheap, and do a similar process. A written off red car, swapped with a stolen silver car, won’t trigger that quick check, and if all you had to do was respray/buy a door panel/pillar, that’s still good profit.
The US does not have anything in the way of export inspections. You can load whatever you want into a shipping container leaving the country.
In the majority of countries, you don’t even need to load into a shipping container. You can just drive it out of the country
In the UK, you don’t bother loading it into a shipping container: you just drive it onto a ferry, claiming that you’re going on holiday or whatever. No export checks because you aren’t exporting anything.
Borders and immigration are.much more concerned with things coming in, at which point they become our problem, than things going out, which becomes other nations problems.
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