Episode 5 Thief Trackers

Bag snatchers, robberies and street crime.

According to the latest police figures,

more than 3,500 incidents of theft are reported every day in the UK.

Tens of thousands of pounds worth of gold jewellery had been taken.

The victim was devastated.

But what happens to our belongings when they're stolen?

Thief Trackers shows who takes them and where they go.

Hiding trackers inside items like cameras,

smartphones and bicycles to trace their every move.

The thieves think they've got away with it.

But we've got them under surveillance.

Using undercover footage, CCTV and tracking technology,

we'll get an insight into the criminal mind.

And uncover the unseen journey that

our possessions take when they're stolen.

Today the Thief Trackers are on the trail of stolen charity bags...

Stand by.

She's taken it.

..tracking down the thieves as they escape with donations

meant for the needy.

Plus, investigators are on the trail of stolen plant machinery.

The value was about £68,000.

No-one knew where they were going.

It's a race against time as it heads halfway across Europe.

As it started to go through Germany,

we realised that it was likely to go to Poland and that then it was

likely to go through the Ukraine and the Ukraine at that time was

involved in a civil war and it was a red line for us.

And GPS technology helps track a burglar's footsteps.

There was quite a lot of excitement when we looked at

the tracker-tagged data. His tag put him at the exact location.

Many people are under the impression that taking donations from outside

charity shops is perfectly legal.

But it's not.

In the last few years, all the major charities have been hit hard.

Donations are down and the loss of revenue through theft is an

estimated £15 million.

It's a crime that shocks the public.

I think if it's left outside a charity shop,

it's there to benefit someone else.

People steal them to make a profit.

Because obviously it's money for a good cause and people taking

advantage of that and taking it for themself.

It's wrong, isn't it? Just because someone has dropped something on the

pavement doesn't mean you can steal it.

People assume that it is the needy

that are stealing but often these days, it's just the greedy.

Scumbags!

There isn't any better word than that, is there?

Helping the Thief Trackers with our investigation is our specialist

crime adviser, Alex Stewart.

He was assigned to some of the toughest areas of London,

both on patrol and as an undercover officer in his time on the force

with the Metropolitan Police.

From theft to drugs to violent crime,

he's seen what life is like on the streets.

You would think that donations left outside charity shops would be safe

from theft but you would be wrong.

Unfortunately, things have got so bad recently that many charity shops

are asking us not to leave donations outside.

Affluent areas like this are rich targets for those who would steal

from the needy to line their own pockets and to show you how bad

things have got, we've left some of

our own donations outside some charity shops.

We've hidden GPS trackers in some bags of charity donations.

We won't tell you where, that would give the game away.

If the bags are stolen, we can follow the signal on a smartphone

or tablet and track down the thieves.

Following their every move is the Thief Trackers undercover team who

will be mounting a covert surveillance operation.

For their safety, you won't see them but you'll hear their voices.

Keep your camera on these guys.

The team set up their stakeout outside a charity shop raising money

for hospice care, the dying.

One of the team drops off our charity bags on the shop's doorstep

after closing time, just like a lot of us do.

Legally, these donations are still the property of the owner until the

charity shop takes them in.

The tracker hidden in the bag is live.

Time to watch and wait.

There are a few people walking by, window shopping.

They wouldn't dream of stealing from those in need.

The team have been here for around an hour and so far, it's been quiet.

Here we go.

You two stand by.

She's taken it.

Quick, quick, quick, quick.

The tracker team split up to try and catch up with the woman.

One person follows in the car whilst two set off on foot in case she goes

through the back alley.

A lady on a bike has just taken the item.

CAR HORN TOOTS

Jump in! Wearing a hi-vis yellow vest.

Trying to track her down. She's very fast. Quick, quick, quick, quick.

And we're in pursuit.

The thief is peddling so fast that one of the team jumps into a car,

leaving only one of the team on foot to track the woman.

We're stuck in traffic now.

A good chance we're going to miss her.

But the thief tracker on foot hasn't given up.

He's got a strong signal and the bag snatcher is just around the corner.

As he is not the police,

he cannot accuse her of stealing but he can ask her why she took the

charity bag.

Realising that she has been spotted taking the bag and being followed,

the thief has sped away.

The tracker hasn't moved.

Still got an eyeball on her?

I just saw her. She ignored me.

I said, "Excuse me." She literally laughed and cycled off.

Even with no signal to follow,

the team are not going to give in and still try to find her.

She went straight down, right?

But she came out on the left here.

-Yeah.

-She saw me.

I think the bag might be down there somewhere.

She might've dumped it, she didn't have it on her.

-I lost her. I ran after her but I couldn't keep up.

-OK.

But she definitely saw me and she definitely knew.

I tried to stop her. I think she must have known because I said,

"Excuse me, excuse me." She must've heard me.

But she didn't stop. She rode right past me.

She looked me right in the eye, smiled a bit and kept on going.

She's taken something from a charity shop on her bike.

She doesn't even look in the bag, just picked it up and walked off

with it and then when you followed her, she's realised she is in

the wrong, she's spotted you and she's dumped it.

Keep your eyes open.

The thief trackers comb the streets, trying to find the woman,

but with no tracker to follow, it's becoming futile.

I think we've lost her.

I think we've probably lost her.

They've done all they can and the

only thing they can do is go back and retrieve the bag.

OK, let's get the bag back.

They got the bag back and although the woman on the bike got away,

what she did was illegal and could be reported to the police.

But perhaps after watching this footage,

she'll think twice about stealing from charity again.

Later, the Thief Trackers come face-to-face with more charity thieves.

You'll put it back?

But it's for a charity shop.

OK.

The UK construction industry continues to be a target for organised gangs

with a staggering £70 million worth of plant machinery stolen in 2015.

But it's not just small, easy-to-move equipment that is snatched.

Thieves will drive off with huge machines, like the telescopic

handlers that can weigh up to ten tonnes.

To combat this crimewave,

companies turn to trackers to try and protect their investments.

CanTrack provide tracking equipment for everything from small cars up to

large construction equipment, trailers, trucks.

To help protect these machines, like many tracking firms,

they recruit highly experienced and specialised ex-police officers.

Mick is one of our investigators who is an ex-police officer.

We typically look for that within the people that join the investigations team.

30-year retired officer, brings a wealth of experience.

He's an ex-CID man so he is methodical, he's got an eye for detail.

I joined South Yorkshire Police in 1983 and then in 2000,

I joined the traffic department, as it was then.

It was through that that I met John.

John Mussett is the other member of the team.

I was a police officer with South Yorkshire Police for 30 years.

The majority of that was working in the traffic department.

I was involved in a small team which South Yorkshire put together

specifically looking at stolen plant machinery so I had an ideal

background really to go into the

tracking side of things, which I have been doing since I retired.

People steal plant machinery for money.

They would steal them and export them.

They are very valuable. They can get a lot of money for them.

During a spate of plant machinery theft, a telescopic handler,

worth around £70,000, was stolen in the Hampshire area.

The machine was fitted with a tracker so the client called

the specialist team into action.

The customer rang me out of hours, about eight in the morning,

to report it had gone overnight from a site down in Hampshire.

The tracker initially, when we got the call,

had given a location on the site the previous evening and then we heard

nothing from it. It tries to get on the network every four hours and on

this occasion, unfortunately, we got nothing for days.

I think it was off the network for at least a week, maybe ten days.

So we were thinking that it was possible the tracker had been found.

These machines, and there were a lot of them, were just disappearing.

I think its value was about £68,000, which is a lot of money to anyone.

No-one knew where they were going, what was happening to them,

they were literally disappearing off the face of the earth.

So we were just thinking, where has it gone,

are we going to hear from it again? Then suddenly the trackers woke up.

It would appear it was still on the machine.

The location it was giving was in the middle of France...

heading eastwards on one of the main motorways.

I think it was very clear to us it was on the back of a lorry.

We could determine that from the speed and the amount of distance

that was occurring between the updates that we were receiving

from the vehicle and because of the size of the machine,

there's only a few different things that can actually transport that.

So, whilst it was a surprise to us to see the unit pop up in France,

because most of our thefts are dealt with on UK soil,

we were very quick to activate and react.

As it started to go through Germany and we realised that it was likely

to go to Poland and if it went to Poland, it was likely to go down and

through the Ukraine which is an established route.

Ukraine at that time was involved

in a civil war and it was a red line for us.

We had liaised with the customer.

They wanted us to go and find it.

With information that we'd got from the Metropolitan Police Plant Unit,

we knew that a lot of these machines were heading into Eastern Europe.

We knew we had a race basically to try and get someone out in front of

the machine if we could, then try and track it and guide the local police onto it.

My instructions were to go home and start packing a bag for potentially

getting on the first available flight to get out to Poland

because this thing was obviously moving.

It was a bit of a rush from then on.

There's two ways we could have approached this so we could have put

Mick a long way ahead of the expected route,

but if it had diverted into a different route,

we would've been really out of position.

So, we're getting updates that are coming through every now and again

and literally, you blink,

and it has appeared on another part of the map and you have to deal with

that real-time updated information.

It became quite obvious that it was heading into Poland so Mick flew out

to Warsaw on Friday, late on,

and I was basically in the back office with him,

watching where the tracking unit was showing up,

contacting Mick on his mobile and letting him know where the search area was.

I eventually landed in Warsaw at 8:00 at night.

I found my hire car and the first

message I got was that it was about an hour and a half south of Warsaw.

Unfortunately, by the time he got there, the machine was level with

him, south of Warsaw on the motorway near a town called

Radon or Radom.

It took me about an hour and a half to get down to Radom.

John had told me that the machine had stopped talking to us again.

So we didn't have an up-to-date location in the last hour.

Basically, I had to go to where it last spoke to us and said it was,

so I had a look around and I had an hour of searching,

trying to pick up a signal from the RF receiver that's in the machine.

As the GPS signal had stopped working,

they reverted to the radio-frequency signal, known as RF.

I couldn't find anything and by this time, it's 11:30, at which time,

I was told, try and find yourself a hotel.

I eventually found a hotel and the night porter didn't speak any

English, so we were actually conversing through his computer in Google Translate.

So he took me to the local cash machine,

paid for my room and managed to get to bed that night about 12:30 or 1:00 at night.

The next morning, the tracker signal wasn't moving.

We kind of guessed that the lorry driver was probably having his break

so we'd anchored the machine so when

it next woke up and came into signal, it would ping an alert.

It did that on the Saturday morning to me.

I got back in touch with Mick and the machine was about an hour

in front of him - heading eastwards towards the Ukraine border.

John rang me saying it had switched on and was driving out of Radom,

heading onto the E12.

So I had to quickly gather all my things together and

into the car and all the time John is directing me.

The most I had was the sat nav.

I was putting various locations in as he was telling me where to head.

He was also trying to give me some shortcuts because obviously the lorry couldn't take minor roads.

It had to follow the main roads.

The point where Mick actually caught up with it was a really tense time

for us. This unit was getting ping by ping by ping closer to

the Ukraine border. Remember, that's our red line.

We don't go there. We cannot safely enter the territory and we wouldn't

dream of asking Mick to go in there, so we've got this one opportunity

which is the border between Poland and Ukraine and the unit was heading

for it minute by minute.

We had made contact with The Met Police,

the specialist in plant theft,

and they were liaising with the Polish police on our behalf to try

and give me some contacts because obviously if I find,

or when I find the machine,

I'm going to need some help from the police because if there's people

there, they'll need arresting and just the simple recovery of the

machine in itself needs police assistance.

When you're working in another country,

you can't just pick up the phone and call the local police number.

There are channels that we have to work through.

There's official and unofficial channels that can be utilised

and it's logistically very,

very difficult and you need to make

sure that you make the right phone call at the right time.

John was telling me that on the night, I was getting very,

very close to it so I was within four or five minutes of it.

I started picking up a signal.

I knew I was getting close. Obviously I didn't know what vehicle

I was looking for, or anything like that. I knew the machine I was

looking for but not what lorry I was looking for.

So, the adrenaline got going.

That was when I started to think, if I actually find this lorry,

what am I going to do? How am I going to stop it?

Am I going to drive in front of it and try and pull it over or what?

I was trying to think, this is going to be getting interesting!

I was just getting very, very close when John rang me and said

the information was that the Polish police had actually stopped a lorry

with a machine in.

Just as he said that, I came upon these two unmarked

police cars parked at the side of the road and my signalling device

was going absolutely berserk,

so I pulled up at the side of them, met them.

We opened the back of the lorry and sure enough,

in the back of it was this machine.

What I didn't realise was,

we were only 50 kilometres from the Ukraine border and that this machine

was actually heading into Ukraine and I wouldn't've been able to

follow it if it had got to Ukraine

because my car insurance wouldn't have allowed me to go there!

But thankfully, we got it stopped.

This recovery had a great effect on thefts that were occurring in the

North Hampshire, Surrey area.

As soon as this one was stopped, it literally put an end to it.

We spent over two days playing this game of chess with these guys.

They were literally that close to

getting over the line and getting away with that theft and we stopped

them and pulled them back at the last minute so the message

is loud and clear - you can steal it in the UK but we will follow you to

the ends of the earth to get that kit back and we did it.

Earlier on, we left a bag of donations outside a hospice charity

shop which raises money for the dying.

We left it when they had closed for the evening,

as many of us do when we can't get there during the day.

The bag was clearly marked that it was a donation.

It wasn't long before someone stole our bag, which is illegal,

unaware there was a tracker hidden inside.

As soon as the thief realised we were on her trail asking questions...

..she dumped it.

To prove just how widespread the problem is, the same night,

we put another bag with a tracker in it outside a different charity shop.

This time, one raising funds for cancer.

We'll see if anyone else wants to help themselves to donations that

are meant to help those in society who need it most.

The Thief Trackers team have set up the cameras.

Time to watch and wait.

Five minutes later and another cyclist is showing interest.

This time, it's a man.

He's going to go for it.

It's gone.

Quick, quick, quick, quick.

The tracker is on the move and shows the route the man is taking so

the team set off in hot pursuit.

The cyclist is aware of the Thief Trackers on his tail,

but he doesn't stop.

They can't accuse him of theft as they're not the police.

They can ask him why he has taken it.

Sorry, mate.

Eventually, the man with the bike decides to stop.

We just dropped it out there.

Yes, but it's for a charity shop.

You'll put it back?

But it's for a charity shop.

Where are you taking it?

We just left it there.

-OK, you put it there.

-OK. No worries.

The man says he was taking the bag to his home and

bringing it back into the shop in the morning.

Whatever has happened in this case, one thing is certain,

anyone who takes a charity bag from outside a charity shop and has no

intention of giving it back is committing a crime and it's not a

victimless crime.

Taking money from those that need it.

Reading in Berkshire is a vibrant commercial town in the south-west of England.

An urban area with a diverse population and like any town,

it has its crime hot spots.

Reading itself is an incredibly busy town.

It's got a very diverse population.

The area of Newtown itself is quite heavily populated by Asian families

and also by students from the nearby Reading University.

We do get quite a lot of burglaries in the Newtown area.

It does tend to go in phases,

so we have a series of them happening and then for a while,

it tends to quieten down a bit.

I enjoy the challenge of investigating burglaries because

they're very difficult to prove.

Her tracking skills were soon put to the test with another break-in.

It happened at a terraced house

during the day.

The family were out

at a family celebration.

The offender got into this particular property at the rear of the premises.

The family had left an upstairs window very slightly ajar to allow

air to circulate in the house.

He had entered their back garden and climbed onto a flat roof and he let

himself in through the rear window

of the house whilst the family weren't at home.

On this occasion, he has only taken the Asian gold jewellery and also

items of currency.

They were easy to carry,

it's the kind of items that can be put into a pocket or a small bag.

I don't think he was in the house for a significant period of time.

I think he was only inside for a few minutes before he's left again.

Of course, he doesn't want to be caught, should anybody come home,

so the idea is to get in and get out as quickly as possible.

The victim was obviously quite devastated about it because

the items that were taken were very personal to them.

They were family heirlooms and had been in the families for generations

upon generations.

So I believe he actually felt almost quite responsible for the fact that

whilst he'd been effectively looking after it for his family,

it had been taken from him.

The first place the police looked was the database of usual suspects,

some of whom were wearing GPS tracker tags, which record their every movement.

The idea behind the GPS tracker tags is actually to stop

offences occurring.

We use it in order to actually monitor prolific offenders.

They wear them to stop us from going round to see them quite so often.

By wearing it, they can effectively get on with their lives,

safe in the knowledge that we are not going to turn up to say hello at

3:00 in the morning.

Unbelievably, one of these tag-wearing criminals hadn't quite

grasped the concept of tracking technology.

When we looked at this particular suspect,

we could see that during the period

when the burglary could have occurred, his GPS tracker tag put

him at the exact offence location.

He was previously known to us for having committed burglary offences.

There was obviously quite a lot of excitement when we looked at the

tracker tag data and knew we had enough evidence there to arrest him

and charge him with the offence.

We went to an address that we know he is often at and he was present

there. He was with his girlfriend so we arrested him for the offence of

burglary and we searched the room that he was in and we in fact found

some of the currency that he had stolen.

It was very unique currency and was made up of about five or six

different countries' currencies so it was quite unique denominations.

So whilst currency in itself isn't particularly unique,

the make-up of what was present was also particularly useful for us in

terms of proving that he had actually committed the offence.

I actually anticipated that he would have admitted the offence,

given that the GPS tracker-tag data from the tag on his ankle actually

put him at the offence location but surprisingly,

he carried on denying the offence

and even entered a not guilty plea in court.

When he was interviewed in police custody,

he actually claimed that he was simply in the area because he was

visiting a friend in the very next door property.

It was a particularly easy case but it was overwhelming evidence and we

were able to convince a jury that he had committed the offence and as a

result of doing it, he received a hefty prison sentence of four years.

Unfortunately, although they solved the case,

they didn't find the family's jewellery and it remains missing.

We will not give up on investigating burglaries simply because of how

intrusive the crimes are.

The message to thieves is basically,

we will hunt you down and we will find you for it.