Summary Writing Task Vehicle Rebirthing

question_id: 5443

Vehicle Rebirthing

In December 2016, detectives from Victoria Police’s Vehicle Crime Squad (VCS) observed a shipping container, a non-descript 40-foot box just like any other, being picked up from an auto recycling facility in Somerton, in Melbourne’s north.

They tracked it to a freight yard awaiting transport to Melbourne docks. It was filled with cut-up cars and parts including two new Nissan Navaras (with a handwritten note in pink, ‘Malaysia do not touch’), a Honda Accord sedan, also cut in half, and an Audi A5, all of which had been stolen.

Subsequent police intelligence uncovered that a car wrecker in Somerton was receiving stolen vehicles, ‘chopping’ some of them and exporting the parts to Malaysia, Dubai, Eygpt and Pakistan.

A nine-month investigation began into widespread vehicle theft, particularly of the luxury kind. After protracted surveillance and copious intelligence, a search warrant was executed at the factory on 4 January, last year. The business was owned and being run by an Iraqi-born Australian who was leasing the huge premises on cash terms.

Among the bits and pieces of cars, police also found a cache of vehicles including a Porsche 911 Boxster that was valued at $180,000, a Mercedes Benz G Wagon valued at $230,000, a complete 2015 Mercedes Benz C200 valued at $50,000, a $40,000 BMW Z4 Roadster and cheaper cars at various stages of being dismantled.

Detective Leading Senior Constable David Atkinson was at the forefront of the investigation which took investigators into international territory. “It was a really important job because it established the intelligence and the suspicions we had that vehicles were being sent overseas. The investigation filled in our intelligence gaps,” he said.

The cars were being brazenly stolen in a variety of ways and from various sources, Det Ldg Sen Const Atkinson said. “Cars were being stolen from the docks and were never registered before being delivered to the auto recycler; they were being stolen from storage or holding yards and some came from aggravated burglaries.”

The January search warrant didn’t seem to deter the determined criminal. It was the first of three warrants, with police executing a second last year on 31 March and a third on 13 August. The second time, they found two more shipping containers filled with vehicles and vehicle parts. Both of these were bound for international ports. The bold offender had continued committing the crime.

It was imperative the investigators worked quickly to ascertain their evidence – once the shipping containers left Australian soil and waters, nothing more could be done investigation-wise as the stolen property would be outside Australian jurisdiction.

“The success of the investigation was in the fact that it proved a link between cars that were being stolen in aggravated burglaries were then being sold to a receiver within the automotive industry, who was then exporting the vehicles to overseas destinations including Dubai, Malaysia and Pakistan,” Det Ldg Sen Const Atkinson said.

VCS’s Detective Sergeant Matthew Graefe said Operation Parlors also uncovered another criminal activity called cloning. “Cloning number plates involves car thieves using the legitimate number plate of an identical car,” he said.

“So what they do after they steal a car, is search up another car that is the same make, model and colour, and manufacture that car’s registration plates, and put these on the
stolen car.”

But at the end of the day, this dodgy auto wrecker and his associates didn’t get away with their crimes. Police seized enough evidence to charge and remand their primary target and identified two others who were providing the stolen cars. Apart from the cars and car parts, police also found diary entries and invoices confirming exporting history.

However, shutting down one syndicate doesn’t give the detectives a break. There’s always another investigation in the offing. “The VCS will continue to target unlicensed scrap metal operators that are believed to be driving the demand for profit-motivated thefts heading for the export market,” Det Ldg Sen Const Atkinson said.