Episode 3 Thief Trackers

According to police figures, more than 3,500 theft incidents

are reported every day in the UK.

They stole part of my life.

But have you ever wondered

what happens to our belongings when they're stolen?

Thief Trackers tells the story of where they go.

SIREN WAILS

We are hiding satellite tracking devices

inside a range of desirable everyday items,

like cameras, smartphones and bicycles

to trace the looters' footsteps.

The thieves think they've got away with it,

but we're tracking their every move.

With secret filming, CCTV and police raid footage...

'Police officers with a search warrant - open the door!'

..we'll get an insight into the criminal mind-set

and uncover the unseen journeys that our treasured possessions take

when they're stolen.

Today, opportunist thieves steal two bicycles

without realising they have GPS trackers on board.

What a waste of a bike just for the whim of some lad.

There's no accounting for some people.

The knock-on effect from a senseless robbery

that had more than one victim.

The thief has ruined my 18th birthday completely.

I was really angry.

Plus, trackers and the police are on the trail

of clumsy heavy plant thieves.

It moved a further two miles from the industrial unit

to a very secluded leafy lane.

It was quite comical the way it was found.

It was hanging off the ramp. They'd missed.

There are over 28 million bike users all over Britain,

pushing bicycle sales to more than £745 million.

But the number of bike robberies is just as staggering.

Former Metropolitan Police Inspector Keith Farquharson

is helping us with our investigation.

Last year, almost 400,000 bikes were stolen across the UK,

often in broad daylight.

This is a really serious problem.

Across the UK, there are hot spots in university towns

like Oxford, Cambridge and Southampton.

But London has the highest bike theft figure of them all.

There are three types of cycle thieves -

those that steal for joyriding,

those that steal for cash or drugs and those that steal to order.

These are usually gangs.

Once a bicycle is stolen,

it often disappears into the criminal underworld.

They can be sold on the streets

or on websites like eBay or Gumtree.

They can be sold in excess of £250.

Police recommend that we should all take careful note of bicycle frame numbers,

which are usually printed on the underside of every frame

as a good way to track stolen bikes.

Another way to detect stolen property

is to use a GPS tracking device, like this.

The device can figure out its location.

It can come up with a set of numbers

that enable you to plot its position on a map

and display that map on a computer screen.

It does that by using GPS,

the Global Positioning System.

The basis of that technology is this device can make range measurements

from here to satellites orbiting in space.

Those satellites might be 20,000km away.

Now, this device can be stripped down and made much smaller,

so you could fit it into something like, for example, a bicycle seat.

And that way, you can keep track of where your bike is.

We are fitting our tracker right inside the saddle

to make it invisible to a potential thief,

though it could make for an uncomfortable ride!

Fixing one underneath the saddle would give an equally good tracking fix.

We're testing this GPS technology on not one but two bikes.

Both will be placed under our surveillance

on the streets of east London

in an area with a high bicycle theft rate.

We chose to run this scenario

between the boroughs of Newham and Tower Hamlets,

which have a combined total of 1,600 bike thefts in the last year.

You don't want to park your bike here,

unless it's got a very, very good lock.

So where are we going to put our bikes?

Well, bike one will be chained to a lamppost

in this alleyway off Valetta Grove,

a busy cut-through that leads to Plaistow Underground station.

Bike two will be a few streets away,

chained to these park railings.

Our objective isn't to confront thieves.

We just want to see what happens to our bikes once they're stolen,

by following their trails.

They will be fixed in place with heavy-duty locks.

They will not be unattended,

as our team will be observing from close by.

We will return to bike two shortly.

Bike one has been chained up for a while now.

No surprise that it attracts a little more attention

as the evening draws in.

Here come three lads.

Let's see if they're interested.

No. Oh, hold on...

Our bike has definitely caught his eye.

And here he is again, scoping out the bike.

He's probably checking the type of lock we've used

and looking for CCTV cameras.

Thankfully, he didn't see ours.

Now he's sure the coast is clear, he's going for it!

He's fiddling with the chain, trying to force the lock...

Good thing we used a heavy-duty one!

..but he won't give up.

Unfortunately, our cameras ran out of power at this point.

We missed the moment when he stole the bike.

All is not lost though,

because the tracker is working well

and we have a signal as it heads off.

We'll monitor that bike's progress,

but what about bike two?

Well, it's had a chequered history.

When we first put it out, it was targeted right away.

Watch these well-prepared sneaky bike thieves,

who seem to have taken a shine to it.

The thief obviously knows what he's looking for.

He's got the spanner, he's loosened the wheels,

got somebody else to help him...

..and obviously taken those on for sale either by website

or to take them on to a second-hand shop.

He has stolen them very, very quickly.

Bike wheels are often taken just on their own.

Usually they're not padlocked up with the rest of the bike.

They're very easy pickings, they are very easy to sell on

either to bike shops, second-hand shops,

or on the websites eBay or Gumtree.

And you can usually pick up easily £20 for a set.

So we bought a new set of wheels and put it out again.

A few days go by...

One Saturday afternoon,

here's bike number two with its new wheels chained to the park railings.

No interest to speak of,

but suddenly there is a rise in footfall,

mostly men, all going in the same direction.

CHANTING

By the sound of it, they're football fans, possibly heading to a game.

Wow!

He's just ripped it off!

CHANTING CONTINUES

Look at that!

He's grabbed it and the lock's given way.

And after some encouragement from his mates...

..he's off!

Later on Thief Trackers,

we'll see where our two bikes end up.

The thief was either arranging for onward transport to the handler

or to try to sell it on

to an honest bona fide buyer.

90,000-100,000 bike thefts are reported to the police

each year in the UK.

Even so, they are not our most stolen items.

That position is held by phones,

around 300,000 each year.

They often end up in second-hand shops, on market stalls

and even at recycling companies.

But a significant number are sold via the internet.

Buyers are tempted by the great value,

but soon discover there's a sting in the tail.

The thief has ruined my 18th birthday completely.

I was worried I wasn't going to get refunded

and I could not afford her anything for her 18th. I was devastated.

Meanwhile, the original owners must cope with the stress of a theft,

the sense of violation

and the need to be vigilant in the future.

Sunderland in north-east England

is home to Marie Martin,

a hard-working mum whose daughter, Shaunie,

celebrated her 18th birthday early in 2015.

I asked her what she wanted,

if there was anything special she wanted,

and she asked for an iPhone 6.

Because I'd had one for two year,

it had been smashed and everything.

So I just wanted an upgrade.

When my daughter come in,

she asked if it had arrived

and I told her it had.

And she just begged me all day to give her it.

You know, it was two weeks early,

but, in the end, I give in.

I was over the moon.

But when they tried to set up the phone,

they got a nasty surprise.

We charged it up and we switched it on.

I've tried to log in to my iTunes account and it wouldn't let us in.

When we plugged it in the computer,

to see if we could do it that way,

it come up that it was a stolen phone.

A message come up with the number of the previous owner.

I was gutted, absolutely gutted.

18 is a very special birthday.

Seeing her smile on her face and then having to take it away

was... Yeah, it was horrible.

The thief had ruined my 18th birthday completely.

Me mam was absolutely devastated that she'd put out

all that money for my 18th birthday just to make it special

and I couldn't enjoy the present that she was getting us.

I was really angry, really angry.

Marie's first thought was to find out what had happened.

I e-mailed the seller,

I told him that this phone is stolen.

I believe the seller knew it was stolen.

He sounded worried and, in his e-mails,

all he was interested in was getting that phone back to him.

When I didn't answer him, he would send another one and another one.

So I do believe he knew it was stolen.

But she's a lot smarter than that

and had other plans.

I was able to track the owner of the phone through the number left on the screen.

When I phoned the owner, I said to her,

"Do you know anything about an iPhone 6?"

Straight away she told me that hers had been stolen.

She was screaming down the phone, "Thank you, thank you!"

The phone was stolen in London in December 2014.

Extraordinary that it should have ended up in the north-east,

a journey of around 300 miles.

The theft victim was so traumatised by the experience

that she asked to remain anonymous,

so we'll call her Jane.

She'd been out partying in London

and at around 9pm was on her way home to south-east London

on a train out of Charing Cross.

I took the 9.30 train.

By around 10.00, I was at Westcombe Park station.

I was using my phone, just texting my friend

and when the doors opened, I saw a guy come in.

He...

sort of leaned over where I was sat.

I was sat, sort of, by the door.

He encroached my personal space so I obviously leaned away.

And then, it's almost like in slow motion,

his hand sort of took my phone.

And then, just before the door closed, ran off.

A lot of people witnessed it

so everyone in the carriage sort of saw what happened.

They told me what to do,

because at that point I was just panicking.

Fortunately, I had my work phone with me so I phoned the police,

got home, bawled my eyes out.

From there, it was a police investigation.

Initially, I was just surprised.

I couldn't believe that it happened.

I mean, I was on the train!

After the incident happened, I became distrustful

and a lot more cautious.

At the very beginning,

the thought of taking a train late at night

would cause me severe distress.

Luckily for Jane, her phone was safe in Marie's hands

and Marie knew just the right thing to do.

I was very grateful, very elated.

If she was standing in front of me,

I'd have given her a big hug and taken her out for dinner.

She could have hidden the phone away

or reset it or not told me.

To give up what would effectively be an 18th birthday present

for someone very special to you, your daughter,

is amazing on her

and she must have a special heart

and I am just terribly grateful.

Not only did Marie reunite Jane with her phone,

but she helped to nail the smartphone vendor,

once she passed the information about his auction account

to the police.

Obviously, all his details were on there - name, address, everything.

The thief, to me, is just lowlife.

Just no good.

Justice was done.

The seller was tracked down and eventually sent down.

Since her ordeal, Jane is now more mindful of her surroundings.

Be wary of strangers behind you,

in front of you, beside you.

It can come from anywhere and from anyone.

Thieves will try to always be one step ahead of you.

In this case, Jane was one step ahead of the crook.

By reporting the theft to her phone supplier,

they were able to block the phone and display a message

to inform future innocent buyers

that the phone had been stolen.

We consumers can help in the fight against phone theft

by enabling any in-built tracking apps

and keeping a record of phone serial numbers and IMEI numbers,

so that stolen handsets can be blocked.

Always alert the police with these details

so that they can tackle thieves on our behalf.

Let's return to our undercover surveillance operation

and a story of thief tracking in a city with a high crime rate.

Earlier on, we fitted two bicycles with GPS trackers.

We chained the bikes up in two separate areas of east London.

A would-be thief tampered with bike one before it was stolen...

..while bike two was pulled from the railings by football fans

and ridden off.

Random acts of robbery like this can leave victims feeling violated and nervous.

Ash Morin's bicycle was stolen in early 2015,

right outside a cycle shop.

We tied both our bikes with two cycle locks

and we went into the store,

spent less than five minutes

and as we got out of the store,

I realised, "Where are the bikes?"

We start getting frantic at that moment

because there was no bike outside there.

I was really upset.

The locks were thoroughly slashed.

I mean, it was not a knife or a chopper or something,

it was something really hard, just like a bolt cutter.

In five minutes, it's just gone.

I was really devastated.

When Ash went home, she had the bright idea

of trying to track down her bike on internet auction sites.

There it was. It popped up on screen.

It was, like, over the moon! We were like,

"That's our bike! Oh, my God, that's our bike!

"What do we do? What do we do!"

Ash contacted the police who took up the investigation.

Amazingly, they tracked down the bike to an innocent buyer

400 miles away in Scotland!

I was quite shocked how far my bike went.

My bicycle went to ride in Scotland before me!

I did not get to ride in Scotland yet.

It's unlikely that our two stolen bikes will have travelled THAT far.

But where have they gone?

Our built-in GPS trackers soon revealed

the routes along which they were trafficked.

Let's take a look at bike number one.

The tracking data shows the thief cycling north,

taking a meandering route

and then heading back south,

coming to a halt half an hour later.

Keith is on the trail.

The data shows that the bike moved to the Dickens Road area,

approximately two miles away from the original site of the theft.

We decided to sit tight,

to wait and see what the thief's next move might be.

My guess is that the thief was either arranging

for onward transport to the handler,

or to try to sell it on to an honest bona fide buyer.

Our patience paid off.

Four days later, the tracker suddenly signalled again.

We tracked it for five miles out into Essex,

where it came to rest on Staines Road in Ilford.

Well, it could be in one of two properties,

but the GPS isn't quite accurate enough

to be able to pinpoint which particular property

the signal's coming from.

The signal remains constant for the next two weeks.

My guess is that it has been sold to an honest member of the public.

We approached both properties

to see if they knew anything about our bike.

One is owned by an elderly resident with no knowledge of its whereabouts.

The other house is occupied by students.

We informed them that our stolen bike was fitted with a tracker

that led us to their door,

but they were not interested and chose not to appear on camera.

All we could do was leave the matter in their hands.

So what about our second stolen bike?

First it had its wheels pinched.

Then, with a new set of wheels,

it was dragged from the railings by this park.

One lad pulls on the bike and the chain breaks surprisingly easy,

considering the amount of force used on it.

However, this doesn't excuse the theft of the cycle.

The tracking data shows that it made its way around the local streets

for a good few minutes.

The bike ends up at the rear of a pub.

It's a constant signal for the next two weeks.

However, the signal then stops.

The bike might still be there.

For legal reasons, we can't name the pub, but we spoke to the manager

and showed him a photo of our missing bike.

He didn't want to be identified

and said he had no knowledge whatsoever

of the bike ever being there.

What a waste of a bike

just for the whim of some lad

that decided to pick it up, ride it to the pub

and dump it there.

There's no accounting for some people.

So our two bikes were stolen.

One was taken to Essex

and is probably in the ownership of an innocent buyer,

the other was held at a pub within 15 minutes' walk

of the theft site.

One thing's for sure,

we have clear footage of the bike thieves in action

and the authorities are welcome to take a look!

Thieves often strike where their victims least expect it.

This is the village of Iver in Buckinghamshire,

which turned out to be the scene of a devious roadside robbery.

Our initial reaction is time being of the essence.

How quickly can we try and recover that roller?

The thieves had a head start

and tracking them turned into a race against time.

That's the opportunity to start stripping assets down.

Thanks to modern tracking technology,

the police closed in on the crooks during a ham-fisted getaway attempt.

I can only equate it to a child

trying to stick the triangle shape through a circle

and make it fit.

This company supplies heavy plant machinery all over the UK,

the kind of vehicles you'd see trundling around

at your local roadworks.

And they don't come cheap.

In the company as a whole, we have about 1,000 rollers.

They range in price.

The small ones which average about one tonne,

they cost about £10,000,

right up to 20 tonne,

which can be as much as £80,000.

A mother lode of temptation

for organised crime gangs intent on stealing high-value vehicles

to sell on at maximum profit, often overseas.

We suffer between 25 and 50 thefts in any one year.

The rollers tend to sit at the side of the road

until the job is complete,

so it is a bit susceptible to being stolen.

More than 2,000 of these big machines are stolen each year,

costing hard-working businesses

an estimated £1 million a week.

That's why plant hire firms look to set-ups

like Gary Stockton's tracking company

to help recover their assets at home and abroad.

We've tracked them across to Poland, to Hungary,

to Bulgaria in the past.

They're used for tarmacking your drive in the middle of the summer,

to some poor unsuspecting old-age pensioners and what have you.

And some of them are just actually stripped down and sold for parts.

Certain areas of the UK that are the more high-risk...

and we tend to suffer more losses than other parts of the country.

With millions of pounds' worth of stock at the mercy of roadside robbers,

David's company had all their diggers and rollers

fitted with hi-tech trackers.

This has integrated RF, GPS and Cell Site positioning.

We are not at liberty to actually discuss the places

where we do install them,

however, they actually have to totally strip

and find the actual unit to remove it.

Their tracking technology was put to the test in February 2015,

when a gang of thieves spotted a roller working on Iver Road,

just outside the village.

They obviously knew what they were looking for.

They knew how to start the machine.

They were obviously organised in what they were doing.

The brazen thieves were undeterred by the size of the machine,

worth £19,000.

They loaded their three-tonne treasure into a Transit van,

before heading west with it,

unaware that their every move was being signalled by the tracker.

This ought to have been a simple recovery mission,

but when the robbery was reported,

the tracking company staff had a surprise.

As we interrogated the data,

we did notice it had been moved two days previously.

So that gives the thief the opportunity

to start stripping assets down.

That 48-hour head start meant that Gary and his team

had to act fast to recover the roller in one piece.

From the tracking data, they were able to look back

over the previous two days

and work out where the roller had been.

It travelled two miles here to this residential area here,

where we suspected that the criminals were lying in observation.

They put it somewhere to see if it's hot or whether it can cool off.

At this point, the theft still hadn't been discovered.

So, thinking the roller was cool,

the gang took it to what they thought would be a safe hideout.

The following morning,

the robbery was reported and the tracking team picked up the trail.

It was actually moved to this industrial area here.

It's here we lost its last GPS position

because it was actually put inside a container.

That didn't stop the trackers,

who had other ways of pinpointing the roller's location.

We actually switch on an RF locator beacon,

which we can track down with a physical wand.

Once the trackers' RF beacon had been activated,

the tracking team went to the industrial park

to pick up its trail using this RF wand.

This is very, very accurate down to 1m.

We have actually tracked things down where

they've actually been buried underground.

On this occasion, we verified it and we was able to identify

which unit from an RF point of view.

Now they knew where the roller was hidden,

it was time to call in the police.

PC Phil Thomson was on duty when the call came in.

I heard the transmissions over the radio,

that the roads policing car

was tracking a stolen road roller

and it was here in the village.

He joined his colleagues in the search for the roller,

down at the industrial estate.

But they hit a snag.

We had no power to enter without a search warrant

to any of the various parts to try and find it.

So we had a discussion back here as to how we were going to approach it,

until we had another call,

after the roads police unit had left the yard,

that whoever was in there with the road roller

knew that we were there, looking.

Thinking the police were closing in at the yard,

the thieves decided to move the roller again.

My feeling at this time was,

"Oh, dear, are they going to get away with it?"

But again, the tracker was still intact.

We were still receiving a signal.

And that was the undoing of the thieves.

Moving the roller out of the container

allowed the GPS element of the tracker to send signals again.

These were picked up by Gary's team.

It moved a further two miles from the industrial unit

to a very secluded leafy lane,

which is here.

It must have been hard to look inconspicuous

transporting a big yellow road roller around a quiet country village

and it was only a matter of time before suspicions were raised

and a local resident informed the hire company.

They are quite a close community and they're very aware

when something's not right.

It's not the sort of occurrence that happens every day.

Therefore, they notified the client.

By that time we had already notified the police,

notified the client and they were sending a recovery crew to this area.

Knowing the police were on their trail,

it seems the robbers panicked as they tried to move the roller.

It was quite comical the way it was found.

It was hanging off the ramp.

They'd missed.

I can only equate it to a child trying to stick the triangle shape

through a circle and make it fit.

They must have had quite a few attempts

to the extent where the neighbours noticed and called us

and then they gave up and left both vehicles.

This particular find, it was five hours in total

from being notified.

We've actually tracked a device for a number of days,

weeks, even months sometimes

and then we've always, actually, recovered the asset in the end.

It's a shame we didn't get to catch the people involved, but...

I'm sure that we'll meet again in the future.

Another victory for the trackers.

However, the hire company are trying to remain realistic.

It's very much a game of cat and mouse at the moment.

I'd say, at the present time,

we are very much the winners,

but, as with everything in life, you cannot be complacent.