Car thieves target dealer lots as retailers beef up security

Dealer Adam Huff of Fred Martin Superstore, a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram dealership off I-76 in the Akron, Ohio, suburb of Barberton, thought his business did a good job with vehicle theft prevention until 2022.

That's when the dealership had to file crime reports for 12 vehicles stolen from its 14-acre campus, in addition to thieves running off with catalytic converters and tires. Most of the stolen cars were V-8-powered Dodge Challengers and Chargers, along with a Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk and Dodge Durango SRT.

"They would come in and use a device that would copy keys or key codes during the daytime and they'd come back later at night and steal the car," Huff told Automotive News. Fred Martin Superstore losses from the theft of new and used vehicles and catalytic converters in 2022 totaled $346,000, he said.

"That just required us to up our game in what we were doing," said Huff, whose dealership sells about 150 new and 300 used vehicles a month.

Auto retail industry experts said they've seen an uptick in vehicle theft at dealerships over the past few years. While the National Insurance Crime Bureau, an Oak Brook, Ill., nonprofit that fights insurance fraud and crime, didn't have specific data on auto theft from dealerships, the group said vehicle theft nationwide has continued to rise over the past four years.

The bureau said nearly 500,000 vehicles were reported stolen nationwide in the first half of 2023, up 2 percent compared with the first half of 2022. Ohio, up 15 percent, is among the states that have seen the highest percentage jump.

2023 was on pace to be a record-breaking year for vehicle theft, a National Insurance Crime Bureau spokesperson told Automotive News.

Although average new- and used-car dealership inventories were down from 2019 through 2023, Aaron Lee, Ally Dealership Insurance senior director, told Automotive News that his company has seen a notable rise in new- and used-vehicle theft claims from dealerships. The insurance and aftermarket products provider to 4,600 dealerships nationwide said its vehicle theft claim frequency surged more than 80 percent in those four years, though it declined to share specific figures. Ally has had a 60 percent increase in the average amount per loss in that period as vehicle values have increased, Lee said.

The largest jump in thefts was from 2019 to 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, he said.

"There have been continued year-over-year increases since then, although it's been not as drastic in the following years," Lee said. "2023 is the first year where we've started to kind of see a plateau a little bit in the frequency, so what we're hoping is that we might be at the top of the hill with that."

Media reports over the last two years have illustrated car theft methods at dealerships nationwide, including a Dodge Charger stolen from a supposed test drive at a dealership in Forsyth County in Georgia in February 2022 and a stolen car being driven through the window of a Cicero, N.Y., Lexus showroom in August 2023. Burdick Lexus declined to comment on the incident.

Ally said on average that 41 percent of vehicles stolen from dealerships that it insures over the last two years were recovered.

"Ally is certainly working hand-in-hand with our dealer customers to help them with best practices and take a look at their lots and provide them with some recommendations on how they can prevent theft," Lee said. "The hope is now we can start to go in the other direction and reverse that trend that we've been seeing over the past few years."

Technology that's becoming more readily available to criminals, providing them alternative ways of stealing cars, is a driving factor behind the uptick in theft at dealerships, Lee said. That technology includes key fob duplicators and relay hacks that use a device to amplify a wireless key fob signal from more than 300 feet, so thieves can activate the key without having to be next to the vehicle. Other methods are more traditional, where thieves get ahold of keys and/or key fobs and drive vehicles off the lots, Lee said.

Best practices Ally recommends include keeping keys in a secure place that blocks wireless signals that thieves could use to duplicate key fobs, tracking which dealership personnel have the keys and when, and implementing strict inventory management so dealers immediately know when a car is stolen and can report the crime quickly.

"Thieves may go into a dealership during the day posing as a casual shopper, and they're kind of scoping the place out and looking for where the dealer stores the keys, how secure their storage methods are," Lee said. "And if they can find a dealership that has a weak spot that they can take advantage of, then they'll come back, sometimes with a group of people after-hours and break into the dealership, go get the keys and go get the cars and drive them off the lot."

Ally has seen an increase in single- and multiple-vehicle thefts using this method.

The insurer's customers also have experienced more smash-and-grab thefts, which tend to involve multiple vehicles being stolen, Lee said. In these instances, a group breaks into a dealership at night and drives the cars through a showroom window to get away.

"We've had some really large, multivehicle theft events at dealerships," Lee said. "That is something we hadn't seen nearly as frequently in the previous years."

Dealerships in regions such as California and South Florida are more susceptible to vehicle theft, but no location is immune, Lee said. Vehicles that thieves steal most from dealerships are higher-end muscle cars, such as Hellcat versions of the Dodge Charger and Challenger, he said.

In 2022, videos on TikTok and YouTube surfaced showing how to easily hot-wire certain older Hyundai and Kia models not equipped with engine immobilizers — a technology that prevents the car from starting without the key fob present. While not isolated to auto dealerships, this crime spree, committed by thieves calling themselves "Kia Boyz," caused problems nationwide. Kia America and Hyundai Motor America, both owned by Hyundai Motor Group, have announced a software fix for the issue.

Dealer Kevin Flanagan told Automotive News he had two vehicle thefts at his McLaren store in Summit, N.J., last year. To combat the problem, Flanagan installed Bluetooth tracking devices in vehicles.

"I don't have the problem that Hyundai and Kia have," Flanagan said. "Other dealers say vehicle theft is out of control, especially in more urban areas. They're getting their vehicles stolen all the time."

Tyler Slade, operating partner at Tim Dahle Nissan Southtowne in suburban Salt Lake City, credits tracking devices with helping recover several used Kia vehicles stolen from the store.

"The thieves did not realize that there was a tracker in the vehicle because it wasn't connected to the car's battery," Slade said. "We were not only able to recover our stolen cars, but we also were able to catch somebody who had a lot of other vehicles at their location that they had stolen from other lots."

Since 2022, Huff said he has spent about $100,000 on theft prevention. His insurer, Ally, recognized 2022 as an unusually high theft year for his Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram store and worked with him on rates.

Huff instituted crime-preventing measures at the store along with his other dealerships, a Hyundai store in Louisville, Ky., and a Nissan store in Akron. He installed solar-powered TrueSpot tracking systems on cars, so as they come and go off the lot, staff receive a real-time electronic notification.

The dealership also started scanning driver's licenses to scare away people who might be seeking a test drive with no plan to return the vehicle.

"Another thing we did is started taking high-value vehicles over $50,000 and started removing their starting chips [from the fuse box] so even if they had a key, they wouldn't even start up and run," Huff said. "You had to open the fuse box up and reinstall a chip into the car to make the car start. That certainly worked and saved us on a couple different events."

To stop would-be thieves from attempting to drive over curbs and take cars from his Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram store, Huff said he added boulders along the front, making it impossible to jump the curb without hitting a four-foot rock. "It [aesthetically] enhanced our dealership and became a very practical thing for us," Huff said.

He also installed motion-triggered lights and a radar-driven radio system that alerts police when potential crime is happening on his lots.

The investments paid off. There were no vehicle thefts at Fred Martin Superstore in 2023, Huff said.

Dealerships in northern Ohio have seen an increase in car theft, said Lou Vitantonio, president of the Greater Cleveland Automobile Dealers Association, which represents 275 franchised dealer members.

"It's really focused on the value of the vehicle and the ability to sell it, and that engine and drivetrain that is the Hellcat has been the driving force of many of the thefts," Vitantonio said. "This has gone on for a number of months and years in our market. The authorities have found a couple of different theft rings they've brought down, and it has slowed, but dealers are taking preventive measures to make sure they're difficult to steal."

Pro-Vigil, of San Antonio, provides remote video monitoring for about 2,000 franchised dealerships nationwide. The company's surveillance staff monitors cameras on-site and uses artificial intelligence to trigger staff to pay extra attention to possible thefts of cars and parts, such as wheels and catalytic converters.

Spotting car theft in action at its clients' dealerships, Pro-Vigil's surveillance staff has initiated audio and visual deterrents, then contacted local police, who have caught criminals on-site. In some cases, dealers are replacing their security guards with Pro-Vigil's monitoring systems, which cost an average dealership about $1,700 a month.

The company is adding about 45 dealerships to its customer base each month, founder Jeremy White said.

“As younger people are moving into the work force and leveraging technology, we’ll see the number of [participating] dealerships continue to rise,” White said.

Urvaksh Karkaria and Carly Schaffner contributed to this report.