Episode 9 Thief Trackers

Bag snatchers, robberies and street crime.

According to police figures,

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

I know it was bad but I didn't think it's that bad.

But have you ever wondered what happens to our belongings

when they're stolen?

Thief Trackers tells the story of where they go.

SIREN BLARES

We're hiding satellite tracking devices inside a range

of desirable everyday items, like cameras, smartphones and bicycles,

to trace the looters' footsteps.

The thieves may think they've got away with it

but we're tracking their every move.

With secret filming, CCTV and police raid footage,

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

No, honestly, I don't know!

..and uncover the unseen journey

that our treasured possessions take when they're stolen.

Today we investigate personal robbery

and follow the footsteps of a sneak thief caught on camera,

unaware he's walked off with a GPS tracking device.

SHUTTER CLICKS

The bag's over the back of the chair,

the victim thinks she's safe,

the thief's seen it and he's pounced.

Plus, devious dog-nappers leave one family heartbroken.

I just completely lost it.

But an old-school detective picks up the trail.

This lady made the decision that the dog was going to be hers.

And a bumbling burglar who forgot to cover his tracks.

I kept telling myself he's not going to get away with it.

I just wasn't going to let it lie.

In spite of the smartphone revolution,

there are still plenty of people around who like to use

a traditional camera.

But the popularity of the digital camera

makes it a target for snatch thieves.

Figures show that more than a third of all camera thefts

happen when we're out and about.

Former Metropolitan Police inspector Keith Farquharson

is helping us with our investigation.

Camera equipment is very frequently stolen.

It's as much a problem for us in the UK as it is for visiting tourists.

And with around 17 million visitors to London each year,

that's a lot of cameras.

The reason why camera equipment is frequently stolen is

because it's very easy to sell on.

It's very rarely password protected,

most people don't take the serial numbers of the cameras down,

and all the thief has to do is to clear the memory from the camera

and then sell it on to the next buyer.

Once stolen, it's very difficult to trace a camera,

unless it's fitted with a GPS tracker like this.

The basis of that technology is this device can make range

measurements from here to satellites orbiting in space

and then, from that information, calculate its position.

But how can we fit a tracker inside this complex piece of equipment?

Now, it's very difficult to fit a device like this inside a camera

because every millimetre of space in here is packed with circuitry.

On the other hand, what you could use is a flash gun

because there's a lot more space inside one of these to

strip down the tracker and hide it inside.

With our tracker fitted and operational,

we're running this scenario in Westminster,

London's number one borough for personal theft incidents.

A very busy part of London with lots of pedestrians, lots of traffic

and lots of cut-throughs.

There are hot spots like this in our towns and cities

all over the UK and we all know where they are.

We'll be filming in a bar on the fringes of Leicester Square,

a large public area that's a magnet for tourists...

and thieves.

Our researcher settles down outside,

behaving just like we all do.

She leaves the camera bag over the back of her chair.

That may seem like an invitation to a petty thief,

but it's a surprisingly common scenario in real life.

Hundreds of bag snatches involve victims' belongings being

stolen from the backs of their chairs, without them even noticing.

So will a sneak thief attempt the same trick with our camera bag?

We've set up two hidden cameras to capture the action.

Now we're running, all we can do is wait.

It's early evening

and our researcher has been joined by a friend.

It's been quite a while

and our camera bag hasn't attracted any attention.

But watch this guy here.

The bag clearly catches his eye and stops him in his tracks.

He walks past, sizing up his chances.

Then, shortly after, he's back again, checking out the situation.

Then he wanders into the pub...

and it's not long before he's out again.

And there he goes.

He's got the camera bag and he's off into the night.

Now we can pick up the tracker signal

as the thief disappears into the back streets of London.

Later on Thief Trackers,

we trace the footsteps of the stolen camera on its intriguing journey.

The bag moved from Vauxhall Bus Station

and stopped in one of the properties along this road.

Criminality knows no boundaries

and thieves will take anything, even pets.

Did you know that around 45 dogs are stolen every day in the UK?

Shocking.

But there are people determined to track down the thieves.

Pedigree puppies can go for £650.

There's a lot of ruthless people out there cashing in on that.

We're in Willesden, north-west London,

and this is Peppa.

She is a Kerry Blue terrier, a pampered pooch who's made

life merrier for the Downing family since the day she was brought home.

We drove home and she was on my lap the whole time.

I knew this was my baby.

And we'd already formed a wonderful bond in the car.

She's so friendly with everybody she meets.

It's just like having a child.

She's given us a lot of drama along the way but she's wonderful.

A very peculiar drama began one Friday in October 2013,

when Elizabeth's Uncle Paul, who lives on the same street,

took Peppa for her daily walk around the block.

There's a row of shops and a bank

and I often pop in and do a bit of banking.

Paul tied Peppa's lead to a post outside,

thinking he'd only be gone a moment.

Lots of dog owners do this without a second thought.

As you expect in banks, there's like a queue

and that could go on for... seeming like hours.

About ten minutes later, I come out of the bank

and the dog is not there.

So I'm, you know, frantic.

Now in a state of shock, Paul searched up and down the street,

hoping to catch sight of Peppa.

You feel like, "Oh, my God,"

like, you know, "I'm responsible for a disaster."

In spite of his anxiety,

Paul had the presence of mind to go back into the bank.

He'd noticed they had CCTV cameras fixed outside.

And so the bank manager goes and looks at the CCTV camera

and he comes back and then he says, like,

"Oh, it looks like two kindly middle-aged women have, like,

"you know, untied the dog and taken it away."

Given that those women had apparently just walked off with Peppa,

it's likely that they were anything but kindly.

Paul now had the difficult task of breaking the news to his niece.

I came home from work and I saw my uncle

and I said, "Oh, is everything OK?"

And he told me not to panic.

I knew the worst shock would be for Elizabeth

and, with her being pregnant at the time...

I mean, I could have kept it together

but I'm a bit of a drama queen anyway

so it was like I just completely lost it. It was horrible.

Putting aside their stress,

the family were determined to do all they could

to track down their prized pup.

My partner and I and my father went down Scrubs Lane and asked

all of the local businesses if we could look at their video footage.

Their persistence paid off.

A convenience store had CCTV footage of two women passing by,

minutes before the same pair were caught on film taking

Peppa from outside the bank.

So we added the picture of the two women to the poster flyers

that we were currently putting on all the lampposts.

Despite covering the area with flyers,

the Downings had no response.

That's when they turned to Surrey's own Ace Ventura,

ex-policeman and private investigator Colin Butcher,

who specialises in tracking down stolen pets.

They felt they'd done everything.

They were at a bit of a loss where to go next.

Colin knew he had to act fast.

Peppa could have been sold on and whisked away to anywhere in the UK.

There's an awful lot of money to be made now

through selling puppies on the internet.

I think there's upwards of 25 to 30 sites that sell puppies.

Pedigree puppies can go for £300 to £650

so it's easy money, it's tax free.

As a former police officer, Colin has an insight into

criminal behaviour and the way thieves think.

Once I put myself in the position of the thief then I'm able to

work out what they did next,

ie how they got the stolen dog away from the scene.

They all make mistakes. It's just about being smarter than them.

His first task was to study the CCTV evidence.

What I was able to deduce from that was that they had

a sense of purpose about them, they had a destination in mind, so

I knew the answer to who they were would lie further down the road.

With terrier-like tenacity, Colin used good old-fashioned

legwork in his attempt to sniff out the dog-nappers.

It's a case of working the neighbourhood, speaking to

security guards, finding out what's in this locality,

so as we can make enquiries to find out where these women had gone,

and that's when we found the second-hand car dealership.

It seems the two women nabbed Peppa while on their way to buy a car

from a dealership just down the road.

They are bristling with CCTV systems but, more importantly,

when they sell a car, they're going to have the owner's details

and an address, so it's just a case now of persuading them

to cooperate so I could view their footage, confirm that they had the

stolen dog and seek their assistance in getting names and addresses.

Colin viewed the footage, sadly now deleted, which proved

the women had brought the dog onto the dealership property.

But data protection rules meant

the dealership couldn't give out their address.

Then came a new twist to the story.

The family had a stroke of luck that would help Colin's enquiries.

While we were out flyering, we got talking to a lady who

was, in fact, a police officer.

And between the two of us, we were able to persuade the dealership

to give us the address of the person that clearly had stolen the dog.

Even though they had the address,

Colin couldn't guarantee he would find Peppa,

as she may have already been sold on.

He went off but he cautioned us, "Don't keep your hopes up

"because, you know, there's still a long way to go."

The neighbourhood we went to was quite rough,

it was very late at night so it was dark,

but you still have to do your job

so it's just a case of making an approach, looking official,

and getting the dog back.

Colin used a canny trick to help him do just that.

When we approach the property,

what we always do is we make a lot of noise,

the idea being if there's a dog inside, it'll start barking.

And that's exactly what we did and we heard a dog barking.

The door opened very slightly,

a woman stuck her nose at the top end of the door

and at the bottom of the door, a little black snout,

which was the dog that we were looking for.

Initially, their reaction was to try and bluff it out,

to say that it was their dog and that they'd had it a while.

What the crooks didn't know was Peppa had one of these little

microchip tags under her skin that will identify a pet in seconds.

All you do is you take the scanner, switch it on,

put it to the microchip and it comes up with a number.

It's like a hidden registration plate inside your pet.

The unique code goes onto a database

and it enables the owner to be traced anywhere in the world.

A quick bleep and a check of the records

confirmed that this was Peppa.

In the end, she just turned round and said she was going to phone in

the dog warden and say she'd recovered it.

But a look around the house you saw there was a new dog bowl,

a dog bed, it had a new collar on.

This lady had made a decision that the dog was going to be hers.

Peppa was swiftly rescued,

to the immense relief of the Downing family.

There were about 20 or 30 people waiting for us,

which was quite a surprise,

and they were all emotional, some were crying, some were cheering.

As I said, it was kind of like England had just won the World Cup.

I just said thank you so many times. "Thank you, thank you."

Now Colin's back to see the family for the first time in two years.

It was night-time the last time I was here and there was...

The kitchen was full of people.

Obviously events like that make you think much more

about, you know, safety and security.

You're very, very fortunate that you got her back.

The first thing I'd say to anyone is keep your dog in your sight

and never tie it up outside a shop or a bank.

And, of course, when she stuck her snout

out that little gap in the door...

I feel very, very grateful for everybody's help,

and Colin's especially.

We weren't going away without her, simple as that.

It was an immense feeling of relief for a lot of people, and joy,

so it was great to be part of that.

PEPPA SNIFFS

Let's see if we can pick up the scent of our stolen goods

in our own undercover operation.

Earlier, we fitted a GPS tracker inside a camera flash gun.

Outside a bar on the edge of London's bustling Leicester Square,

a cunning sneak thief waited for the victims to be distracted

before swiping the camera bag and disappearing into the crowds.

Wedding photographer Trevor Stoneman

has first-hand experience of being a camera theft victim.

His son had a dream wedding in Florence, Italy,

and Trevor was proud to be the official photographer.

I was going to be photographing my son's wedding

in a location that I could only dream of.

But at Florence railway station,

while helping his wife to settle their grandson,

Trevor made the mistake of handing his baggage to an unlicensed porter.

I took the little 'un out of his pushchair and took him

to my wife, who was up the far end of the carriage, and then said,

"I'm just going to go and get the bag back with the cameras.

"I'm not happy about it being there."

Just at that point, the train started to pull out of the station.

When I got back there, the case was gone.

I don't think I've felt a sense of loss like that.

It really did physically hurt.

He had 400 wedding photos stored on his camera card

but hadn't backed them up.

Now the only photos his son and daughter-in-law have

are from the guests.

When we got to Venice, Natasha actually came after me...

..and she put her arm around me...

..and said, "It's OK, these things happen."

I guess nobody knows how I feel,

and I get this every day.

You know, it's just horrible.

And part of me wants to go back to Florence

and find that lady on that railway station and confront her.

Of course, police always recommend

that thieves should not be confronted head-on.

Our camera was stolen outside a bar in central London

and the thief's route is clearly visible from our tracking data.

Security consultant Keith Farquharson is on his trail.

I was quite surprised that he did it in such an open way.

There weren't many people about, it wasn't crowded.

Usually they'd look for a crowded bar, a crowded restaurant,

and have a look for the victim propping a bag up

against the back of a chair.

It's a very, very easy crime to commit when that's the case.

After meandering around the West End of London at walking pace,

data shows the tracker substantially increased speed, heading south.

The tracking data shows that it's come from Covent Garden

into Trafalgar Square

and then moved into Whitehall, where it's stopped for a short time.

The speed of the data moves up to 20 or 30mph,

which would indicate that he's got onto a bus,

which is confirmed because it stops at Vauxhall Bus Station.

Vauxhall is a major transport interchange.

Could the thief have been about to disappear out of GPS range

onto the Tube network?

Thankfully, not.

In fact, it looks like this suspect lives quite close by.

The tracking data shows that the bag moved

from Vauxhall Bus Station, south,

along the back roads into Fentiman Road,

which is in the Stockwell area,

and stopped at one of the properties in this road.

The tracking signal led us to a block of flats,

so our camera and perhaps also the thief are somewhere inside.

But it's always a challenge

to pinpoint a precise fix within a large building.

GPS tracking will take you to the block of flats that the device is in

but it won't take you to the exact flat.

That would have to be found out by police intelligence,

by perhaps a Crimestoppers report, or by perhaps even leaflet dropping.

We sent in our team to investigate.

They distributed flyers

in case anyone had innocently bought a second hand camera.

We also took along video footage of this brazen theft to show

to residents in the block where it seems the thief might live.

Unfortunately, no-one recognised him on the days we called by.

But the day after, the tracking signal suddenly stopped dead.

It seems our enquiries may have rattled the thief's cage

and he knows we're on to him.

So at around nine o'clock the next morning,

the tracking device stopped working.

This would indicate to me that the thief has taken

the bag home, looked through the contents, discovered the tracking

device and destroyed it, and probably the flash gun as well.

We weren't going to let the destruction of the tracker

stop our investigation.

We spoke to a local camera store to inform them that a camera thief

is in the area, hopefully making it tougher for him to sell locally.

Then we checked online auction sites in case the thief

tried to sell it to an innocent buyer.

No sign there yet, but we have the camera's serial number

and we'll track the camera using that.

And we visited other camera stores to make them aware that

a stolen camera is on the market.

Although they carry out checks when buying second-hand cameras,

it is very hard to disprove ownership.

When a customer comes into store to sell us a camera,

the only request we ask of them

is to prove who they are - photo ID and proof of address - and this

is the only means we can really rely on to say that it's theirs.

So what can we do as consumers to keep tabs on our property?

When someone buys a camera, record your serial numbers with

the suppliers. You most probably are going to get an extended

guarantee as well so there's a little plus for you as well.

We will have recorded your serial number at point of sale

so it will be on your receipt. Record it on your computer.

So all the things that you can safeguard yourself,

absolutely use it.

There are also online property registers which the police

recommend we use, like Checkmend and Immobilise.

Ideally, though, we should be more aware of safeguarding

our belongings when we're out on the street.

When you're using the camera out of the case,

if it's got a wrist strap, slip it around your wrist,

basically so that somebody can't just snatch your camera

if it's only held in your hand - it makes it much more secure.

If the camera's in the bag, out of use, don't do what the lady did

in the film and put it over the back of the chair.

Make sure that it's either clipped to the chair

or the chair leg is over the strap of the camera

and the case or bag is in the centre underneath the table.

It makes things difficult for the opportunist thief.

So our tracker was destroyed in Stockwell by a thief, whose

petty plans for profiteering we hope to have confounded.

What's more, we've got extraordinary footage of the rogue in action

and the authorities are welcome to take a very close look.

Time and again, GPS technology has proved very effective

in bringing thieves to justice,

when tracking devices reveal the location of stolen items.

But once in a while,

a thief can be tracked without the aid of hi-tech gadgets.

In January 2015, it was Mother Nature who offered

this burglary victim a means of tracking a criminal.

He might as well have took a loaf of bread with him

and dropped some bread crumbs, to be honest.

The village of Cottingham lies on the outskirts of Hull

in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

Aaron Wilkinson lives here with his partner, Kirsty,

their two children and their various pets.

This area is a good area. It's really quiet, this street, as well.

There are a few families but mostly retirees.

Unfortunately for this quiet community,

there was a burglar on the prowl.

With Kirsty and the children asleep and Aaron dozing on the settee,

he had no idea he'd made a schoolboy error.

I never locked the door.

That was where it all went wrong.

None of them realised

that their home was now vulnerable to a burglary.

By the time Betty the dog raised the alarm, it was all over.

YAPPING

I actually woke up because of the dog yapping.

I just said, "Quiet," I said, "Quiet," you know

but then she actually wouldn't,

she was actually... You know, she was trying to tell me something.

And as I opened the door, I could see my kitchen cupboards open

and stuff and the front door was slightly ajar.

I thought, "There's something going on here."

Aaron came upstairs to wake me up and asked me if I'd gone outside.

I thought, "No, it's half-past five in the morning.

"I ain't gone anywhere."

And then he just told me all the kitchen cupboards was open.

First thing obviously you think of - I've been robbed.

A stranger was downstairs, rooting about in my house while me

and my children was fast asleep upstairs. It's just unnerving.

What if he decided to come upstairs and we was all in bed?

There's just so many things that go through your head.

Burglaries of this type often leave victims feeling violated

and the emotional effects on a family can be devastating.

It can be shattering.

You know, for families and for the kids even more so,

extremely upsetting.

They're professionals

so they will case a property, they will look around it,

they will see the quality of your locks on your doors and your windows

and if they are lower quality, they will have a go at getting in.

Our unfortunate couple soon worked out that the thief had

made off with Aaron's car keys and Kirsty's watch,

which had been a Christmas present from Aaron.

However, all was not lost.

The burglar had left an incriminating set of clues

and really shot himself in the foot in the process.

I opened the front door

and there was nothing in the front garden except snow.

And it looked strange

cos there was only one set of footprints leaving my house.

Aaron was determined not to let this burglar's trail go cold..

Despite the early hour and without a thought to the potential risk

of facing the burglar, he set off into the cold night.

Absolute nutter! Anything could have happened to him.

The guy could have been carrying a knife,

he could have got into a fight.

I kept telling myself, "He's not getting away with it."

I just wasn't going to let it lie.

I thought, "There's footprints there. I can follow them.

"He's not getting away with it."

If it hadn't been snowing I wouldn't have had a chance.

Aaron's route led him into the back streets of Cottingham,

all coated in snow.

Now he's retracing his steps to reveal to us the burglar's trail.

There was footprints and they was the only

footprints on the ground so it was pretty easy to track.

It was like he had paint on the bottom of his shoes and

every footprint, I could see.

You'd think that somebody that's pinched off somebody,

stolen that much stuff, would probably be clever enough to say,

"Wait a minute. My footprints are on the floor, yeah?"

Full of adrenaline, he tracked the thief for more than two miles.

But the route became ever more erratic.

Every corner of the street, he'd go through a front garden

to make sure he wasn't seen by anybody.

He went down the back alley of the street opposite my own.

He actually eventually went down a walkway

and the footprints stopped at a back fence.

I had a look over the back fence and they went

and carried on to the door.

I thought, "He must have gone here."

So I knocked on the door and no answer, so I had to ring the police.

Calling the police was the best thing Aaron could have done.

It turns out they had been on the trail of this burglar for months,

and Aaron's keen tracking work

had given them all the evidence they needed.

When I told the police when they arrived,

I said, "I followed his footprints,"

actually he had a grin on his face as if it was too good to be true

but then, once he'd had a look over the back fence

and actually seen the footprints, he actually said to his colleague,

he said, "He's right, you know, his footprints are all over."

Police later arrested the 20-year-old man hiding in the house.

They told Aaron that when they found him

his trousers were still wet from his snowy trek.

Not only had he robbed Aaron's home,

he admitted to another 30 thefts in the Hull area,

during which he had stolen more than £26,000 worth of items.

It's funny when you think about it, really, cos it's...

Even now looking back.

At the time, I was a bit angry about it but, looking back now,

you think, "Thief caught by footprints in the snow,"

it's like something out of a cartoon, ain't it?

You just don't really hear of it.

The thief was convicted and sent to prison for three years,

no doubt a great satisfaction for the victims, who must still

live with the emotional impact of the original burglaries.

Aaron and Kirsty now take home security precautions

a lot more seriously.

I'll always check the doors.

Just the thought of someone walking through my door...

Aaron was lucky not to have been injured while chasing the thief

and it's worth bearing in mind the advice of our ex-copper.

I would always suggest that,

if you've managed to track down your stolen property, rather than

you confronting the thieves, to get the police involved because

it could end up in tears, as I say, and you don't want that to happen.

I actually welcome the snow actually now, you know.

Let someone burgle me now while it's snowing

cos they won't get away with it, you know!