Disorganised criminals and Russian-speaking mafias: Why car thefts are surging in Ireland

When Sonia Harris went to a Dublin city gym one afternoon, the experience quickly took a sinister turn.

Her new car was stolen from outside and although it turned up months later elsewhere in the country – with new registration plates and being used as a commercial vehicle – the saga rumbled on.

“It seemed to be 100 per cent opportunism,” she says of the theft. “I’d parked in the city centre and went to the gym. One of the trainers came to me after about 20 minutes to tell me my wallet had been found outside on the street.”

Harris, who runs the Dublin-based Harris PR agency, was initially confused. But for staff at the gym, this was not their first rodeo. They knew to check her locker and found it had been broken into, with Harris’s keys and wallet stolen. And though the bunch of keys was quickly found discarded, the car key was gone.

“I ran around the corner to Townsend Street and the car was gone,” she says. “The car wasn’t close enough that you could just use the key to find it. So he must have seen me parking it and then watched me going into the gym and using the locker.”

Harris “panicked”, as the Dacia Duster was new and she had personal items worth thousands in the boot “including about eight pairs of shoes, make-up bag, car seats for the kids”. She said gardaí at Pearse Street station were “brilliant and really kind to me” when she went to explain.

Weeks later, after the insurance company had paid out, the car turned up close to the Border. Gardaí secured CCTV from the street outside the gym and a suspect was identified and charged. But when the case went to court, shortcomings with time stamps on some of the CCTV derailed the prosecution. The suspect – a prolific criminal involved in chaotic but non-violent offending – walked free.

Harris says the man lived not far from her home and she was nervous about bumping into him for months afterwards, given “he and all of his family got a good look at me during three days in court”.

“It all went on for about 18 months and it was just one of these nightmare scenarios,” she said, though she never saw the suspect again.

Harris is one of a growing number of people falling victim to car theft, which surged to a 10-year high last year, with some 4,976 recorded cases across the State. That figure was up 21 per cent on 2022 and 40 per cent above 2019′s total.

Garda sources who have investigated car thefts in different parts of the country say two clear and distinct trends are at play. Many of those behind the spike in thefts are described by gardaí as “disorganised criminals”. But there are also mafia-style for-profit operators with significant international contacts, especially among the Russian-speaking community in Ireland and abroad.

But what is a “disorganised” car theft?

“You are talking about guys, mostly young fellas, robbing cars for joyriding and maybe other crimes like ram-raiding shops. But they are certainly not in it for the money,” said one source. “But these are the ones behind what we call ‘high-volume’ thefts. They’re very prolific and they are often going for Japanese imports which have very poor security features, no immobilisers, so they are easy pickings. And those thefts, by these Irish guys, have surged.”

Some vehicles stolen by the “disorganised” criminals eventually turn up undamaged and are returned to their owners. Many are found crashed and are ultimately written off.

A different trend has emerged more recently, which gardaí say involves sophisticated gangs investing in technology that enables them to hijack a car fob inside a target’s home. The signal from the fob is activated and amplified, which enables a criminal to open the vehicle and drive away. The hand-held amplifier devices, available online for between €7,000 and €9,000, can be used by someone outside a house to activate a fob the owner believed was safe inside.

Across Ireland – especially in Dublin, Meath and Louth – more and more vehicles are being stolen in this way. More worryingly, very few, if any, of these are being recovered. Instead, they are brought to industrial units, known as “chop shops”, and taken apart for spare parts, which are exported for resale in eastern Europe.

“You’ve heard of the movie Gone in 60 seconds? Well, these cars are gone in 10 seconds,” said one source. “We’ve seen CCTV of some of these thefts and, literally, you’re talking 10 seconds – car opened, started, gone. But if they see a steering lock in a car, they’ll just turn and walk away and try another house. Anything that will slow them down, make it more awkward for them … they’re gone.”

For those using an amplifier, the signal can only be boosted to open and start a car once, and that is provided the fob is close enough to be accessed.

“Once they start the car and drive it off, they can’t stop it and start it again,” said one source. “So they are driving to a particular location and parking the car, maybe on the side of a road or in a supermarket car park. They keep an eye on it to make sure it’s not located through any tracker in the vehicle. And once it’s not found after about 48 hours, they’ll arrange for it to be collected. But they’ll never drive it straight to one of their chop shops.”

Gardaí have, at times, intercepted tow truck drivers collecting cars stolen in this way. However, the drivers regularly say they were contacted by phone by someone they did not know who claimed their car had broken down and needed collection.

“That’s their cover story,” said one garda. “And we’ve found those guys taking these cars away in areas where we know there is a suspect chop shop close by.”

When the numbers of those callers who contact tow companies are examined, they prove to be untraceable pay-as-you-go phones, meaning the caller cannot be identified. Sources add that several chop shops had been found in Longford and Westmeath, areas where commercial units are cheaper and easily accessible from the motorway network.

Many of those identified as running these enterprises are members of Lithuanian gangs, with garda sources saying other Russian speakers – including some Georgians – are also involved. They appear to have extensive contacts abroad, with as many as one in five vehicles stolen – up to 1,000 at last year’s pace – suspected of ending up in chop shops and their parts exported.

“These cars are vanishing into thin air,” said one Garda source. “And we’re getting no evidence, no queries from police in Europe about cars they’ve recovered. Nothing like that is coming back to us.”

Police in Lithuania have carried out searches and discovered significant stashes of car parts. When the serial numbers from airbags, gear boxes, engines and other parts have been checked with manufacturers, it has been confirmed they were from cars first reported stolen in Ireland.

“Everyone thinks the cars being targeted here are the expensive BMWs or high-end Mercedes but that’s not the case,” said one source. “Anything in the Volkswagen-Audi group … those parts are all interchangeable really. That also includes Skodas, the typical family cars.”

Gardaí say the Russian-speaking suspects often only work with people from their own communities. The fact they have no need for lower-level Irish criminal involvement means the networks are difficult to penetrate from a policing perspective, with the language barrier alone insulating them.

The fact stolen vehicles are dismantled and exported for parts mean there is very little – if anything – in terms of evidence available to be pursued. “No forensics, no CCTV, nothing; it’s all gone into thin air,” said one source.

Garda headquarters did not respond to a series of questions about the issue of organised car thefts. However, sources said suspects had been identified and several investigations were under way.

Overall, while the sophisticated for-profit end of the car theft sector was expanding, gardaí remain worried that there is scope for further significant growth.

“If you look at the guys involved in the disorganised end of car thefts, a lot of them generally progress on to other things, whether that’s organised burglaries or armed robberies,” said one source. “If they realise there’s money to be made stealing cars and they move up the food chain, that’s a big, big worry. We’re in serious trouble then because there’s a lot of them.”