BLOOMBERG
The parking garage on Florida Avenue in Washington, DC, was an ideal place to stash the carjacked Mercedes-Benz. And the stolen BMW. And the purloined Dodge Challenger. Residents of the apartment complex wheeled high-end models down into the garage all hours of the day; why would anyone notice a couple of extra luxury cars?
The stolen-car business was so robust in Washington in 2023 that the Florida Avenue garage doubled as a clandestine showroom. Buyers and sellers congregated to receive incoming vehicles, then inspected the cars and quickly sealed the deal. Automobiles not sold within hours of the initial heist were listed on Instagram and shown by appointment. This business had dependable suppliers and repeat customers. Text messages intercepted by law enforcement captured buyers placing orders for specific makes and models. One 18-year-old delivering stolen vehicles to the garage executed six carjackings in a week. He left a half-dozen victims terrified and one shot dead.
The hustle and bustle at the Florida Avenue showroom drew the attention of the DC Metropolitan Police Department, whose officers infiltrated the operation. Posing as middlemen, they organized a takedown in late summer 2023, and four men were charged with operating a carjacking racket. Those suspects, currently jailed and awaiting trial, represent a tiny fraction of the vast car-theft underworld that led to the robbery of 1,020,729 cars in the US in 2023, the latest annual figure from the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau. This continued an unwelcome reversal: Car theft had been falling steadily since peaking in 1991. Then came the pandemic. Since early 2020, auto thefts have increased by about 30%. Statistics for 2024 are incomplete, but partial state-level results suggest that law enforcement campaigns to combat violent carjackings led to a fall in thefts last year.
About 10% of the cars stolen in the US today are smuggled overseas, according to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which runs a New Jersey-based task force that integrates the efforts of local and federal law enforcement and coordinates crackdowns up and down the East Coast. Nowhere is international stolen-car traffic more robust than in the trade from the eastern US to ports in West Africa. With long-established routes hauling millions of shipping containers each month, car thieves have become bold in their efforts to slip stolen vehicles into this flow of legitimate commerce.
Used-car brokers in West Africa know what models their customers will snap up, so they call US-based thieves to beef up inventory of highly desirable models. “They will give orders: ‘I am looking for a 2024 Mercedes SL350 with leather interiors,’ ” says Noel Moloney, a detective who retired in December after four decades investigating car thefts, first with the New York City Police Department and then with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). “They will have someone sitting at a gas station in Philadelphia looking at people. He has an order for that specific car, and a woman goes in, buys her coffee and leaves her car running. Or he might be able to have her followed and some guys would carjack that car.”
In the thriving used-car markets of West Africa, the most sought-after vehicles include Range Rovers, Toyota pickups and BMW sedans. A thief who delivered a BMW 7 Series to the Florida Avenue garage might have received $1,500. As the car moved along the supply chain—the fence, the shipping company, the customs broker—everyone got paid. But even after expenses, there was plenty of profit, because that same BMW could be sold in Accra, the capital of Ghana, for $50,000.
Nowhere in the US in 2023 did car thievery surge more than in metropolitan DC, which saw a staggering 6,809 cars stolen in 2023, a 64% year-over-year increase. Notable cases included the attempted robbery of a vehicle used to transport President Joe Biden’s granddaughter Naomi Biden, in which Secret Service agents opened fire against armed assailants. Another Washington shoot-out involved US marshals working the security detail for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. An FBI agent was carjacked by a 17-year-old. Texas Representative Henry Cuellar had a gun stuck in his face and his car taken. Thieves in DC even made headlines after apprehension. A man who was arrested after crashing in a stolen vehicle evaded police custody at the hospital, then stole an ambulance to escape. He was seen on surveillance footage driving away while wearing a hospital gown, IV needle still in his arm.
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