New type of car crime

Originally Posted by embee

Following on from the earlier comments about the fishing rod through the letter box stunt.

1 - don't leave your keys in the hall just inside the door

My mate got done only last week with this one. They came with a torch, shone it through the letter box and saw the car keys on te hall table, fished them out and stole his fairly new S-max (got what he deserved for having an S-max some would say). Anyway the first he heard was when they recoverd it from a ram raid on.......a Spar !! They wrote off the car plus did ££££'s damage to the shop for about £80 worth of ciggies.

Keep all important keys in a lockable key safe somewhere not overly obvious and out of sight (screwed into the inside of a cupboard/panel under the stairs) whenever they are not in your pocket/in use. Although they may well crowbar the key safe off the wall and take it away with them to crack open at their leisure (not really possible to do it quickly with an angle grinder etc. as you may well knacker the keys inside), they will have to come back the next day for the car once they have gotten the keys out. This gives you time to fit a steering wheel lock, move it to a friend's garage whilst it awaits the locks being changed, etc. Not only is this approach much more secure, it also puts an end to losing your keys.

The ideal place for storing spare keys IMO is "off site" with a good friend (who you trust implicitly and won't resent being woken up at 4.00am if you need them), who lives locally. The keys should not be stored with anything identifying where they are to be used. In return, you can hold your friends' spare keys for them. Ideally they are good enough friends that you'd have keys to their house anyway, so if they are away on holiday, you can still get into their place to get your keys back.

Originally Posted by Well Oiled

My mate got done only last week with this one. They came with a torch, shone it through the letter box and saw the car keys on te hall table, fished them out and stole his fairly new S-max

That's a pretty old scam, and has been shown on TV before now.

I believe this trick became more popular when 'The Real Hustle' broadcast it in to everyones homes.

Originally Posted by gettin2dizzy

I believe this trick became more popular when 'The Real Hustle' broadcast it in to everyones homes.

Yup, that's the show I saw it on too, genius idea. Lets tell everyone about this problem, but not actually realise that the most likely people to watch it are the ones wanting to learn new scams, not the ones that want to protect themselves.

Moral of the story for that scam, never keep your keys near the door.

'The real hustle' has moved on now to scamming people in Vegas, so it's more comical to me.

Originally Posted by Baph

Yup, that's the show I saw it on too, genius idea. Lets tell everyone about this problem, but not actually realise that the most likely people to watch it are the ones wanting to learn new scams, not the ones that want to protect themselves.

Moral of the story for that scam, never keep your keys near the door.

'The real hustle' has moved on now to scamming people in Vegas, so it's more comical to me.

It's a crap show. I laughed at the episode in Manchester
'all you need to do is buy an ex securicor van which will set you back around ?15,000; have it resprayed and acquire some uniforms and you're set to rob the streets'.

...yeah. Easy...

Originally Posted by gettin2dizzy

It's a crap show.

You have to laugh at some of the idiots on the show though. As the saying goes, you can't cheat an honest man.

Originally Posted by Baph

You have to laugh at some of the idiots on the show though. As the saying goes, you can't cheat an honest man.

Yeah. That girl could talk my wallet off me anyway