Episode 6 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.

He had my house keys and my driving licence, so I was

a bit worried that he would just go and let himself into my house.

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 undercover team are on the

trail of a stolen laptop.

Pursuing the elusive thief through the dark backstreets.

Plus, Newcastle's own Dynamic Duo turn detective

to track down a phone snatcher.

My phone was gone, I was just completely gutted because I

was like, I'm never going to get that stuff back.

And tracking technology comes to the aid of Britain's unluckiest biker.

He didn't think he'd ever see that bike again.

He even gave me a kiss and cuddle!

Britain has an increasingly mobile workforce,

many of us, using laptops and tablets on the go.

But our portable offices also make tempting targets for criminals.

National statistics show over 400,000 incidents

of personal theft in 2015.

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.

Many of us carry work or personal information with us on our

laptops, and we often take them out with us

when we go out in the evening for a drink.

Laptops are easily movable and sellable,

which makes them a prime target for the thieves that hang around

city centre cafes, bars and clubs.

Just waiting for you to have a drink,

relax and let your guard down.

We fitted a tracker into a laptop.

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

But if it's stolen, we can follow the satellite signal on

a smartphone or a tablet and track down the thieves.

Keeping tabs on the crooks is the Thief Trackers undercover team,

who'll 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.

One of the team gets into position outside a cafe,

with the laptop on the table a few inches away.

He's distracted by texting and chatting on the phone,

it's something we all do.

The remaining thief trackers watch from nearby.

OK, everyone. Here we go.

The tracker hidden in the laptop is live.

Time to watch and wait.

OK, he's touched, we're definitely on.

And he's walked off with it. Go, go, go!

He's grabbed it and the team are off in hot pursuit.

The thief trackers pick up the signal as the thief heads

west with our laptop.

The team are right on his tail, just metres away from the crook.

The thieves are arguing. They think there's a tracker in the laptop.

These are dangerous people, so the thief trackers keep their distance.

Later...

..the undercover team follow the signal from the laptop to

track the thieves through the back streets.

As they trace the thieves' footsteps.

Personal electronics are a favourite target for thieves.

Stealing smartphones is known as "apple picking",

and one crimewave saw over 300 phones

stolen every day in London alone.

But advances in tracking apps,

initially designed to help you find your lost phone,

now help in tracing your stolen mobile, as happened in Newcastle.

Two colleagues arrived for what they thought would be just another day

at work in the Tyneside Cinema cafe.

I started work, it was about 12:30.

Put my things out the back, as I normally would.

I was out the front, waiting tables

and just kind of getting on with my job.

They had no idea they were about to star in their own drama.

At about 20 to one, we got a delivery.

As the delivery was coming in, a guy must have nipped in.

Sarah went in the back to her phone out of her bag and then

ran back in saying her bag was missing.

I had initially thought it was a joke.

I thought that one of the managers upstairs was playing like

a joke on us, so I went upstairs and had a look around the offices

and then Gemma came upstairs and said her bag was missing as well.

The first thing that we did was check the CCTV.

That's when we noticed the guy had sneaked through the back door,

taken my bag, Sarah's bag.

He was obviously a chancer who'd just taken the opportunity

as a delivery was coming in to sneak in.

It was my house keys, car keys,

driving licence and all of the money that was in my purse as well.

Bank cards, yeah, and plus my phone from my coat pocket as well.

I was just completely gutted because I was like, right, that's gone,

I'm never going to get that stuff back. I was devastated.

I rang the bank straightaway and cancelled my bank card.

Basically, kind of gave up immediately.

We then rang the police

because we've got a police radio at the Tyneside cafe,

told them what had happened.

They were saying it was going to be two to three hours

before anyone could come out.

And that was when my boss Jamie mentioned the Find my iPhone app

and said, "Why don't you try and find your phone on this app?"

This app uses GPS satellite technology to pinpoint

the position of your phone on a map.

After that, I changed from totally devastated to,

right, we're going find this guy now.

Instantly, the app pinged into life, showing the thief's whereabouts.

The two amateur detectives were hot on his trail.

So we checked the CCTV, to get a good idea of what

he was wearing, what he looked like, who basically we were looking for.

We were monitoring the app every 30 seconds. Gemma was constantly on it.

They tracked the thief,

thinking the information would help the police find him.

But they suddenly found themselves part of the action.

We realised he was two streets away from where I lived.

He had my house keys and my driving licence,

so I was a bit worried that he would just go and let himself into

my house and kind of empty the contents.

When she realised he was quite close to her house, that was when her

instinct kicked in and we both said, "Let's just do it, let's go for it."

I've got two kids so you don't really want someone in your house.

Fight or flight just took over and it was the fight reaction took in.

The first thing we did was call a taxi.

Neither of us had any money because both of our purses had been stolen.

So we had to beg,

borrow and scrounge from everyone to get some money.

So, initially the tracker was going quite slowly and on occasion,

it was stopping.

Is it moving, Gemma?

Then it started to move very quickly when we were in the taxi.

The dot was moving and then stopping maybe like half a mile further down,

then stopping. So I was like, "He's on the bus,"

cos I could see it moving from, like, stop to stop.

We were just concentrating on this tracker,

all we could think about was that.

Because I knew the roads, it was great cos I could tell

the taxi how to try and track him and then just following the dot.

We were just focused on the Find my iPhone app, we really were.

Both of us kept checking back, checking the tracking.

And a couple of times it went off it was like,

"Oh, God, are we going to lose him?"

When we saw the bus and then it finally dawned on us that, yeah,

this is actually real and we're going to see him here.

When he got off the bus, we knew it was him.

We knew that it was him as soon as he got off

and that's when we stopped the taxi.

We all jumped out the car and then we spotted Sarah's

yellow phone poking out his pocket.

And I just said, "Please, can I have my phone back?"

He looked really shocked and was completely taken aback and said,

"Oh, this phone? I found it. I was taking it back."

And I said, "That's my phone. I've seen you steal it."

Sarah grabbed her phone and I was like,

"I want the rest of our stuff."

That's when I called 999 to get like police assistance then,

just in case he did get a bit...

Cos we didn't really know if he was going to be aggressive or...

You just don't know what he was going to be like.

When the police arrived, they immediately apprehended him.

Did struggle for quite a bit to get into the car,

and he was denying it and saying that he had done nothing wrong and,

so they basically arrested him straightaway.

With the thief in custody, the police discovered Gemma and Sarah's

bags dumped in a waste bin outside his flat.

Kind of probably dawned on us, a bit shocked of our actions really.

It probably was a bit crazy to chase someone you don't know.

'You kind of act on impulse, you want your things back.

'You want your house keys and you want to know that they're

'safe and that you're safe, really.

'I would probably do it again, yeah.'

Yeah, would definitely do it again.

Yeah, it was worth doing it for the getting our stuff back,

but maybe not from the vigilante comments

that we got from work all of the time!

My boss was saying,

actually he didn't know if we were really brave or just really stupid.

The cost of running a car is always expensive,

particularly the price of fuel.

But every time there's an increase at the pumps,

there's a rise in petrol theft.

Known as "bilking", this is a very difficult crime to track down.

More importantly, it isn't a victimless crime

that's swallowed up by the fuel companies.

It's the small forecourt businessmen who suffer the losses.

This service station is a family run business and when we do get

fuel theft, it has quite a big impact.

An average driver is about £40-£50

and for us to get that sort of money back,

we need to sell maybe another couple of thousand litres of fuel.

Other service stations in the Leeds area have also been hit.

Fuel theft is quite high. It really affects the business.

You feel like you really can't do anything.

The number of drive-offs - people coming and stealing -

it's not very low, it's quite high.

Leeds-based fuel crime specialists Forecourt Eye,

believe they had a solution.

Well, we identified a growing trend in forecourt crime.

There was no real means on the market to combat this.

There's obviously been a lot of cutbacks in the police

in recent years, so they often feel like they are being used

as debt collectors to retrieve the money back from forecourts.

So we thought we'd put together a package where everything could

be done instantly.

Forecourt Eye is a crime reduction tool which simply enables

a forecourt to report the details of the vehicle that's driven off

without paying for their fuel.

All the information - CCTV and statements - that are produced

get sent directly to the police and the investigation

can commence within 20 minutes.

The details are locked online, on a site sharing information

between businesses, the public and the police.

Once it's on the database,

it links all businesses who subscribe together.

So essentially if a vehicle pulls up

to a garage in Leeds, drives off without paying for their fuel,

that information can then be sent to a forecourt

at the other side of the country, in London.

A few weeks ago we received a report from a petrol station,

informing us that they had just had a drive-off.

The CCTV showed the guy actually arriving on the forecourt.

Starting the fuel pumps up and filling barrels up.

So the barrels were five-gallon drums that

he had adapted to fit in the passenger seat of his vehicle.

The next minute we knew he was just sat in his car again and just

went off without paying for any fuel.

He took maybe 150 litres

and the value of that was coming up to about 140 odd pounds.

It does make a big hole in our pocket.

So this guy was clearly an experienced and seasoned criminal.

He returned to the garage later the same day

and did exactly the same thing.

So not only did this individual strike twice, we also traced him

to two other garages where he'd committed exactly the same offence.

Using the software, the garages were able to send us the CCTV

within minutes of the offence happening.

We provided the information from the CCTV,

the registration number of the vehicle, the make of the vehicle,

what the person actually looks like, because the CCTV they've put in

is really up-to-date and it captures more or less everything.

Our investigation team were then able to track the offender to

other garages and we hooked together an intelligence package

which we were able to provide to the police for prosecution.

They were fairly promptly able to go round and arrest him.

Forecourt Eye has been very helpful in a way that they've taken over

all the paperwork.

They'll take the person to court and, for us, they actually get us

our money back for the fuel that has been stolen.

We're returning to our covert surveillance operation

as the Thief Trackers undercover team are on the trail of a laptop,

fitted with a tracker that was stolen from outside a cafe.

The thief met an accomplice and they were clearly spooked.

(They're arguing.)

The team call for backup.

The crooks can be onto the thief trackers.

The signal shows them zigzagging through the back streets.

With reinforcements in place, the thief trackers can carry on.

Really? What, back in Soho?

They back up there? Is that Tottenham Court Road? It is.

They're on Tottenham Court Road.

Is it worth getting in a cab?

The thieves have now doubled back near to where they stole the laptop,

so the team jump in a cab.

Straight up to Tottenham Court Road, please, mate.

This guy's just stole our laptop. Yeah.

Yeah. We've got it.

See where we are.

-Charing Cross Road.

-Charing Cross Road.

If you can pull over to the right. Can you go down this Phoenix Street?

And it's not long before they close in on the tracker's signal.

-Are they in here?

-Somewhere in here.

The tracker's signal shows the laptop

is definitely around this area.

But the signal shows the thieves are off again.

OK, we're on. It's moving.

-Where did you say, down there?

-Where the chairs are now. Come on.

The crooks are given the thief trackers the run-around,

but the team are still right on their tail.

Are they on Rupert Street?

Should probably have stayed in Soho

and just let them come back towards us.

They're on Wardour Street at the moment.

I need you all to stay calm, stay close.

Here we go. I suspect around the corner.

The team are closing in on the thieves...

-Straight on.

-..but they're being sucked into quiet alleyways,

off the beaten track.

Here. This little alley here.

The signal finally comes to a stop around a number of alleyways.

Right, we're going to search around here.

This is extremely dangerous for the team.

The thief and his accomplice

could be around any one of these dark corners.

The tracker is showing the team the right area, but the rabbit warren

of alleys is making it so difficult to find the thief and the laptop.

The team keeps searching and go behind some buildings

into a dead-end.

It's an area full of rubbish bins.

Could it be a trap?

Although they had a signal...

..the team can't locate the laptop.

It's likely the thief has hidden it securely to retrieve later.

It's too dangerous for the team to wait all night

in a dead end alley, so they withdraw.

However, overnight the signal goes dead.

It's likely this thieves returned

to retrieve the laptop and destroy the tracker.

We may not have caught up with the thieves,

but we know who they are, and if the police want to take

a look at our un-blurred footage, we're happy to oblige.

1.2 million of us ride a motorbike for business,

as well as pleasure.

But bike theft has reached record levels,

so the chances of getting it stolen are high.

But the chances of getting it back in one piece are very low,

as criminal gangs steal bikes to strip them down into spare parts.

For many bike owners, it's a risk they take...

..as one London biker discovered.

I always wanted to have a sports bike.

Then I passed my full licence,

I got the bike I always wanted, which is R6.

Tomas has already been a victim of bike theft.

So he fitted his pride and joy with a tracker.

But just six months later, it was put to the test.

I'd finished my shift and then I came to what was

my motorcycle parking bay,

I found that there was no bike left.

The tracker was not alarmed.

Which meant that they couldn't

trigger the tracking from the beginning.

So we had to wait until the cycle comes in,

which wakes up every eight hours.

Once the GPS tracker went live,

his tracking company discovered the bike hadn't gone far -

to a housing estate just a few hundred metres away from his office.

We got the call and found that the bike was in the King's Cross area.

But to pinpoint the bike's exact location, recovery agent Danny Lucy

needed to zone in on the tracker's radio-frequency signal.

What the tracker was showing us was that it was in Midland Road.

We went up and down in Midland Road

and we found it was bouncing off of one of the houses.

And we was walking down the alleyway at the back

and the finder was pinpointing

it was down the side on the left-hand side.

We found the motorbike tucked down the back of a little alleyway.

Felt so happy. I went to hug Danny.

Even gave me a kiss and cuddle! He did.

Yeah, he was very happy to get his bike back and he didn't think

he'd ever see that bike again.

After this experience, Tomas took extra precautions with his

beloved bike, and for a while, all was well.

I woke up one morning, getting ready for work.

I came out, out of my house and I realised

that the bike is not there any more.

I rang my tracking company straightaway

and informed the police that my motorbike is gone.

As this was the second time the bike was stolen,

tracking company MD, Richard Taylor, took over the case and headed

towards the last reported signal in the Dagenham area.

Richard recorded details of the case on camera

as he tracked the bike.

We've got the radio direction finder equipment turned on.

We're on the A406, heading towards the Dagenham area.

We knew we were going to have to do a radio find because

we weren't getting a GPS.

We considered maybe it was

in a lock-up or something like that.

GPS satellite tracking is great, but when it goes into a building,

the signal can drop out,

so they follow the tracker's radio frequency instead -

known as RF.

And once we've got that RF audio confirmation,

we know we're going to find the tracker.

Well, I'm going through what appears to be an estate.

In and out of roads, trying to pick up the signal.

Circulating around that area, and then we get that pulse,

that audio pulse.

OK.

-BEEPING

-That's the RF picked up.

OK, so I've parked up basically.

We've parked up and we've got quite a good strong,

powerful signal here.

But it's emanating from somebody's back garden.

At this point, Richard called the police -

standard procedure for trackers as they don't have the authority

to enter private property.

And while I've been waiting here, looks like we may have

witnessed another stolen motorcycle taken into the same property.

Still waiting for the police, so hopefully they'll be here shortly

and we can find the stolen motorcycle.

And the police arrived on site.

We went inside the garden of this house

and the stolen bike was inside...

..in the back garden, towards the shed.

And inside the shed were other motorcycles,

or some parts of motorcycles.

Richard had uncovered what's known as a chop shop and Tomas's bike

was moments from being stripped down into spare parts.

I think they were quite surprised to see a chop shop

for motorcycles, actually in someone's back garden.

Normally it would be in an industrial unit and

a bit more on an industrial scale.

Once police forensics had checked out the crime scene,

Tomas got his bike back.

We contacted Tomas, we gave him the good news,

we told them the bike was all in one piece and it all looked like

he could ride it away,

so we asked for him to come and collect the bike.

He turned up and he was over the moon.

I was very pleased with Richard who recovered my bike a second time.

And so, I didn't know how to thank him, so I showed him a thumbs up...

for his good work.

Two recoveries of Tomas's bike, absolutely excellent.

That was good news. And then, we had a call -

a third recovery was needed.

It's just a thing that happens all the time for me.

Thieves struck again, but once more the tracker proved invaluable.

I knew what I had to do.

I knew that I need to get the bike, otherwise it would be stripped off.

And the tracker would be thrown away somewhere.

What Richard did, he just sent me the exact location of the bike

so I could make my way to see if it's still there.

So me and my colleague, we went out from work about nine o'clock.

I was slightly nervous. You know, going to some alleyway.

But I was lucky to find my bike again.

I would advise anyone who owns a good sports bike to do

the research and find a tracker that suits their needs.

I thought at that point, let's not push it for a fourth.

Let's get this unit serviced, let Tomas have

a new battery in his tracker

that will keep him going for another four years.