Episode 8 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.

Why does someone think they've got the right

to jump in our vehicle and take it?

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 a stolen tablet computer...

I have no idea where he is.

..tracing the thief's footsteps over 1,000 miles across Europe,

using GPS technology.

Plus, opportunist car thieves steal one man's pride and joy...

My car is definitely parked on this roadside.

..that's tracked down in a high-speed motorway chase.

And a family business is hit by organised criminals...

Someone walked by, saw the keys in the ignition and jumped in the van.

..striking just when they least expected it.

50 yards from the van and the van just pulled out.

Personal electronics rate high on most consumer's shopping list

and around half the UK population now use a tablet,

and innovations in telecommunication

allow us to use these portable devices virtually anywhere.

But this freedom puts our possessions at risk,

making us targets for snatch thieves after some quick and easy cash.

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.

Busy shopping centres like this

are constant hotspots for theft.

Lots of people going about their business at lunchtime

or in the early evening after work,

not really paying attention to what's going on around them.

The crowds of people, exit and access points

and lots of links to public transport make for

ideal getaway routes for crooks.

We fitted a GPS tracker into a portable tablet computer.

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 and track down the thieves.

Watching 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 location for our stakeout

is one of the biggest shopping centres in Europe,

with over 42 million visitors per year.

It's massively popular with shoppers, but also thieves.

The area was the nation's top crime hotspot in 2015.

The team arrive and begin setting up the various hidden cameras.

Two Thief Trackers sit down amongst the hustle and bustle of shoppers,

like they're having a lunchtime chat, something we all do,

with the tablet computer between them on the steps.

They get the close-up camera into position,

checking to make sure the tablet can be seen.

But before all the cameras are in place,

events move on a lot quicker than expected.

Yeah, he's taken it. He's definitely got it. He's gone.

Caught by surprise, they don't know who's taken the tablet.

But the tracking signal soon kicks in

and the Thief Trackers are quickly in pursuit.

Only one problem - they don't know what he looks like.

They've spotted someone with a tablet they think may be the thief.

One of the team puts a camera in his bag and sits next to him

to get a close-up shot to compare with the footage of the man

who stole the tablet computer earlier on.

He's using what we think is our tablet, but he's so brazen,

the team don't want to confront him before they're absolutely sure.

OK, we can't confront him until we definitely know it's him.

I need to know if that's him. Is that him?

Quick, check the footage.

They know that they have the right man

and the team move in to talk to him,

but as they do, he's moved on.

But they don't need to see him.

The tracker signal is showing exactly where he is.

The thief's gone into the underground network

where the signal goes dead.

But only an hour later, the tracker signal comes back to life

and leads the undercover team to this estate in east London.

From the signal, they know the tablet computer

is in one of these flats.

-Go!

-So, to try and flush him out,

the team knock on doors and ask a few questions.

They know who they're looking for.

Oh, OK.

-No? Not at all?

-Oh, no.

-No?

There are no sightings of the tablet thief,

although not everyone opens the door.

Somewhere in this building.

No? Not at all?

As the signal shows the tablet is still in this building,

the team stake out the flats, hoping to see the thief.

Despite staking out the flats for several days,

there was no sight of the thief

and the tracker showed that the tablet hadn't moved.

The team wondered whether their cover had been blown.

Suddenly, just when the Thief Trackers felt they'd hit a dead end,

the signal from the tablet computer shows it's on the move.

The thief has slipped out the back

and he's heading towards a London airport.

Later, the Thief Trackers trace our stolen tablet to the airport,

hot on the trail of the thief.

OK, OK, OK. It's definitely here.

-It's here?

-It's definitely here.

We are it. That is it.

To some people, the car is just a lump of metal

and some nuts and bolts, a means to get around.

But others form a bond with their four-wheeled friends,

like Tom James from Wiltshire.

It's quite a large vehicle.

Some people might say it's quite imposing.

To me, it's my car.

I spent a lot of time working on it, improving it,

adding my own little touches to it.

My missus would be upset if I said this,

but it's almost part of the family to me.

So, when I first purchased the car,

I just had the basic factory-fitted security.

I was at a Land Rover show a few years ago

and I saw the Skytag team up there.

They had an offer on for their tracker.

We have trackers on all sorts of vehicles.

Classic cars, heritage vehicles,

vehicles that they love, have meaning to them.

Our tracker's a very small box,

a small black box, the size of a cigarette packet

that buries away inside the vehicle.

We sell them as a self-fit item

because everyone puts them somewhere different.

And that's the key to having a tracker, is it not been found.

I decided to fit the tracker.

It just seemed like a good sort of backup insurance plan.

Land Rovers are a fairly attractive vehicle to steal.

They're our single largest market at the moment,

primarily because they are easy to steal.

They've got older locks, older steering locks,

but also they are a very large Meccano kit

that unbolts and comes into pieces.

It's easy money for the thieves from the point of view of,

steal a vehicle, take it apart, sell the bits, that's it.

Tom was about to find out just how easy his car was to steal.

I'd been down to Bath

for a self-defence lesson I'd been attending

for a couple of years.

While he was learning how to look after himself,

the love of his life was defenceless.

An opportunity one thief didn't miss.

I'd stayed behind sort of five or ten minutes or so,

to talk to the instructor.

Pretty much everybody else had gone, so I was pretty much on my own.

I looked up and down the road and had a sort of moment of confusion

where I thought, "Did I park the car there?"

My car is definitely not parked on this roadside.

I immediately phoned the police and reported it as stolen.

The procedure for Skytag is to get a crime number from the police.

So, once I'd achieved that, I then dialled the Skytag number.

We had the call from our client to say that his Land Rover Defender

had been stolen and he'd come out of the gym

and it wasn't where he'd left it.

We could see the vehicle was moving as we turned it on,

transmitting every 15 seconds,

disappearing away from Bath up towards the motorway.

So, we contacted Avon and Somerset force control and they have a login

and password to our system,

so they were able to log in and see the vehicle live on the screen.

I was a little bit shocked, I think, that it had been stolen.

I never expected that to happen.

We were obviously in contact with Tom and keeping him up to date

of what was happening. We were able obviously to tell him

that the police were following his vehicle.

The vehicle turned onto the motorway

heading towards the toll booths on the Severn Bridge.

So, as soon as he told me he'd found it and that he could see it,

I was instantly relieved.

There was not really much that I could do,

so once Skytag had got hold of the vehicle

and the police were following it,

I was essentially sort of taken out of the equation.

We sat watching the vehicle moving across the screen with the police

and I thought, "Oh, right, it's going to go into Wales."

Two or three minutes, later he called me back to tell me

that the police had got a team of cars in and around

the sort of area of my vehicle

and their plan was to try and box it in on the M4 bridge.

A short while later on, sort of 10, 20 seconds, I thought, actually,

"Do you know what? That's possibly not the best idea."

It's quite a powerful vehicle.

Potentially, the thief could just push his way out of it,

put the police car into the hard shoulder and drive off.

Their next idea was to close the M4 toll bridge.

This would then create a sort of a build-up of traffic,

a backlog of traffic, and essentially stop the pursuit

due to sort of volume of traffic.

So, they radioed ahead.

And they closed down the toll booths.

Just briefly, just enough time to put some traffic there

so that the vehicle had to stop.

At which point, the police surrounded the vehicle.

The driver realised...

he needed to escape, essentially,

and tried to make his way down the M4 on foot.

At this point, a police dog had been set onto him

and he got brought to ground.

I was quite impressed overall with the efficiency

and the smoothness of the operation.

I realised after the event that without the tracker,

my car would've been gone.

It would've been stripped for parts and sold.

Essentially, the tracker was invaluable

in returning my property to me.

Without it, I'd never have seen it again.

We're returning to our covert surveillance operation

with the Thief Trackers undercover team.

Earlier on, the team were setting up their hidden cameras

in a busy shopping centre when our computer tablet

was stolen from right between two of them

by an opportunist thief who'd been watching their every move...

He's taken it, he's definitely got it. He's gone.

..unaware it has a GPS tracker inside,

pinpointing his position at all times.

Because the thief was using the tablet openly,

the team had to double-check they had the right man.

OK, we can't confront him until we definitely know it's him.

I need to know if it's him. Is that him? Is that him?

Quick, check the footage.

The Thief Trackers traced the tablet via the satellite tracking signal

to a housing estate in east London.

The team staked out the estate for several days

with no sighting of the thief.

But suddenly, the tracker signal sprang into life

and showed the tablet computer was heading to the airport.

With the team on the trail, the signal goes down,

so it's likely whoever has the tablet has jumped on a plane.

All they can do is wait for the tracker signal

to give its next position.

Sure enough, a few hours later,

the GPS signal springs into action again.

However, this time, it's pinpointed the tablet's location to these flats

over 1,000 miles away in Warsaw, Poland.

But surprisingly, the next day,

the tracker shows the tablet may be on its way back.

The undercover team mobilise at Luton Airport.

The Thief Trackers take a chance

that because whoever has the tablet computer flew out of Luton,

they'll be flying back the same way.

They have no idea which flight he's on,

so they keep an eye on the tracker.

OK. OK, OK. It's definitely here.

-It's here?

-It's definitely here.

We are at it. That is it.

OK, we're on.

-7.10?

-Yeah.

-15 minutes ago?

-Yeah.

-So, there's a good chance he came through then, right?

It says Airport Approach Road.

I think he's outside.

As the team move outside, the tracker signal becomes stronger.

I am, I am, I am.

EQUIPMENT BEEPS

Their hunch has paid off

and they realise it's the man who stole the tablet,

so they go in to tackle the thief, a potentially risky situation.

They're not accusing him of stealing, they're not the police,

just asking him if he's seen the tablet computer.

-Do you know Westfield Shopping Centre?

-Yeah.

Yeah, we lost it there.

-Do you?

-Yes.

-Amazing.

But even though the team have shown the thief that they've tracked him

from east London to Warsaw and back,

he's insisting that they provide more proof that it belongs to them!

His claim that he found the tablet on the steps is not true.

As our hidden camera footage shows clearly, he sat behind the team

watching and waiting for an opportunity to snatch it

from right under their noses.

Most people would have handed the tablet back,

but this man is going to brazen it out,

asking for more proof it's ours.

The Thief Trackers decide to play along to see how far he'll go,

so they call the number he's given us,

asking him to meet us and return our tablet.

-Hello, Is that

-BLEEP?

-Hello,

-BLEEP.

-This is the guy you met at the airport. How are you?

I'm very good, thank you.

I just thought I'd call because I'm going to be in Stratford today

and I wondered if you were around and we could maybe catch up.

I could show you some evidence that the tablet is mine

and we could maybe swap it over?

Fantastic. Why don't we say one o'clock tomorrow?

Bye-bye.

Wow!

And amazingly enough, the next day, he turns up...

-Thanks for coming to see me.

-..bang on time.

I'm good.

No, no, I'm not a detective.

Because it's got a tracker in it.

-No, I put that in there myself after I bought it.

-OK.

I found it here, it was lying like that.

And I pick from the stairs, so I didn't know.

What can I give you...

I have a photograph from when I first bought it

to document its serial number, which is just here.

All this information will be on there if you look through it.

When did you find it? What date did you find it?

OK, let me see when I took that photograph.

That'll help determine that I had it before you.

That's not good.

Stolen property is rarely recovered but thanks to the tracker,

we got our tablet back.

So, that's one to the Thief Trackers.

-Yeah?

-I found it here.

He's still proclaiming his innocence but we have the un-blurred footage

that shows him quite clearly watching the tablet and the team

before stealing it from between them and walking away.

If the police want to have a look at this tablet snatcher in action,

we're more than happy to share it with them.

With commercial theft,

it's the small businesses who can find themselves a target

for organised criminal gangs...

..thinking they're less likely to have updated their security systems.

Good afternoon, Traffic Management Services, Lauren speaking.

Lauren Barlow runs a family business with husband Michael.

At Traffic Management Services,

we provide temporary traffic management for servicing works,

construction works, utility works on the roads.

So, we provide traffic light set-ups,

stop-go set-ups, pedestrian management,

road closures and diversions, all the sort of thing that, really,

people get frustrated about when they're caught in traffic jams.

When the jobs get put on the planner,

I will allocate men to the jobs and then put the vehicle to the lads

to make sure they've got the right vehicle

for the right job they're doing.

We need to make sure they can fit the right amount of cones,

signs and make sure the vehicle is a vehicle that can tow traffic lights

if it's a traffic light job they're doing.

Their business expanded with a company buyout.

The vehicles have increased massively in fleet

since we got taken over in 2011.

Back then, we only had something like 12 vehicles on the fleet

and they were all rented.

We've now gone up to a fleet of 47 vehicles, so each vehicle,

you're looking at around £20,000 per vehicle on just the basic van.

But unfortunately, they hadn't upgraded their security.

The old company used to have tracking systems, then it expired,

then we had a van stolen from just down the road.

That vehicle was missing all day.

We had five or six men out, searching the area.

As the thieves took it, they passed our MD

and he thought it was the lads going out to site,

so he just waved at them.

We remembered that the vehicle had one of the old tracking units.

We rang Ctrack to see if there was anything they could do to enable

the tracking and eventually, at about 5 o'clock that day,

they managed to locate it.

That prompted us to say this system is invaluable to us as a company.

Having learned their lesson,

they fitted trackers to all their vehicles.

We're fitting our technology to a whole range of vehicles.

A lot of vans, so we're servicing

fitting to a lot of utility and service companies.

We also fit the technology to larger trucks for visibility,

for transport operations, cars of all types, shapes and sizes.

There is really no limit to the kind of vehicles that we can fit this to.

And it wasn't long before the trackers were put to the test.

We had a traffic light job on for the council.

Me and my mate and the two council lads, it was a pretty standard day.

Nothing different.

We went out to the job, six o'clock start.

We loaded the van in the morning, went out.

We got on site.

We needed the beacons on to tell everyone that you're working.

You need your engine on for them to be running

or it will kill your battery.

As it was an older van,

it didn't have the modern cut-out system that allows the driver

to take the keys out of the ignition whilst keeping the engine running.

We were working out of the back doors as it was off the road.

So, I was packing the cones up,

chucked a stack of cones on my shoulder, just walking to the van,

got 50 yards from the van and the van just pulled out.

As I see the van turn round, I'm wondering, "Where is he going?"

obviously thinking my mate's in the van.

I dropped the stack of cones off my shoulder,

turned round and then my mate's stood there with his hands out

as if to say that's definitely not him driving it!

It's a gut-wrenching feeling.

It's a horrible, horrible feeling.

I then realised my phone was in the van as well.

I was not best pleased, that's one way of putting it.

Everyone will tell you that when the phone's been nicked, it's awful.

It's an awful feeling. You've got things on there that...

like, pictures from my little brother being born,

that my mum and dad hadn't got, that a lot of people hadn't got,

so it's the gut feeling inside,

it is gut-wrenching, it's not a nice feeling.

Why does someone think they've got the right to jump in our vehicle

and take it from us, and while we're trying to do a job for someone?

So, there is always a lot of anger.

You don't sometimes quite believe that someone

feels like they've got the right to do it.

Because we didn't have any phones on us,

we had to ask the council lads to ring the number -

luckily, on the back of the signs, we've got the stickers,

the TMS stickers and it's got the number underneath -

and ring the headquarters and get in touch with our logistics manager.

I was actually in my office doing my normal job and I got a phone call

from someone upstairs saying,

"We've just had a phone call from one of the lads on site

"saying the van has been stolen."

Someone walked by, saw the keys in the ignition and jumped in the van.

It's a horrible feeling when a van gets stolen in that way

because you don't know how the lads are feeling themselves, what,

if anything, has actually happened to them.

I always have the tracker logged onto my screen

on one of my screens in my office,

so I can look at that pretty much instantly.

We normally would ring the police at that point

and let them know where the vehicle is.

Ctrack found out about it quite quickly.

The customer did inform us

but I think the interesting situation about this one

is they were able to go straight to the software,

identify the vehicle and, therefore, they were able to take

complete control of the situation themselves.

I could see the vehicle moving

and then it moved down a couple of side roads

and just parked up on a little estate.

I jumped in my van and drove out to where the vehicle was.

When I got to the vehicle, it had been parked up, locked up.

My initial reaction when I got there,

all they've done is stolen the van, parked it up to just see if

obviously there is a tracking unit on it

so they could come back later on and potentially steal it and strip it.

It's a big relief, it always is,

getting your vehicle back, because it's a big expense.

The only things that were missing was my two phones

and my mate's one phone.

It was only a couple of weeks before that we'd got them fitted

and when you go from a firm not having any trackers in the vans

or anything like that, all the lads were like,

"Why are we having trackers? I don't understand it."

They thought they were, like, catching up on us.

A couple of months later, a van gets nicked

and it proves its point, proves why we got 'em.

For the company, the safety of our employees is paramount

and for them to take a vehicle without any thought

to who's in there or who's working around the vehicle,

on a site like that as well...

I just find that unbelievable.

I know they lost some of their personal equipment

and things like that but it's good to get the vehicle back.

You do feel a bit like you've got one up on whoever's taken it.

So, hopefully they're watching it when you get there with the police

and they know that they're not going to catch you out

because we're one step ahead of them.