Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche o Lexus. Luxury cars are easy prey for car thieves in the safe NY In the 1990s, dozens of cars disappear every week. In just six days, they stole up to 48 high-end cars. Even for New York, that’s huge. Since they can’t find them stripped down to recover the parts, someone is taking them abroad.
The only clue the police have is the use of EZ Pass electronic toll systems in many of these cars. In all the stolen cars that had one, their owners have seen that they had a charge on the vehicle. Triborough Bridge after being robbed. From there, the police thought, the only way to get there was to JFK Airport or to the port of Brooklyn if you want to send a car abroad. The airport was ruled out for obvious reasons, leaving the port. But they never managed to find a single clue. Behind this efficiency in the theft, a former chinese spy that stole A thousand cars earning 40 million dollars.
From spy to luxury car supplier
It all starts in the late 80s in China. Mijian Yang He is then an intelligence officer of the People’s Liberation Army who returns to civilian life. And he does what anyone would do at that time in China: he heads to Shanghai. The city is growing at a dizzying pace as the Chinese are becoming outstanding pupils of the capitalist system. Some more than others, as always, and the former are thirsty for Western consumer goods, such as luxury cars.
Yang sees a business opportunity there. Between the time it takes to import one of these cars and the taxes they have to pay for their import, the idea of getting a Mercedes, Audi or Lexus at a good price and quickly is tempting.
It is not clear how, but Yang is said to have used his connections in the military to propose a deal to local mob bosses and some of his former superiors: the importation of luxury cars into China in just six weeks from the time the customer orders the car and it is delivered. The six-week waiting period is a huge advantage in 1990s China.
Chinese customers are willing to Pay $150,000 for a $60,000 BMWAnd if that car is stolen, the profit margin for the organization is astronomical. They are left with $500,000 to start operating.
Minjiang Yang arrives in New York with false documents and keeps a low profile while in New York. He poses as a newly arrived emigrant nicknamed Kenny and drives a Nissan Altima that has seen better days. But above all he begins to recruit his team.
Yang set up an efficient organization with security protocols inherited from his time in the military. Yang meets his lieutenant, Dean, at a wrecked car auction. Dean is in charge of recruiting and controlling those who are going to steal the cars. He is basically the head of human resources. Dean meets an expert car thief, his friend Mario Lopez.
When Mario stole a car he did it reprogramming the anti-theft system of the car you are interested in in 60 seconds. Mario agrees to steal for Yang. Once Mario unlocks the car they are interested in, a driver is tasked with taking the car to a parking lot or parking it somewhere else for a few days. The idea is to “cool it off,” that is, to check that the car does not have a tracker (GPS locator) that, if activated, could lead the police to the car.
If the car is still there after a few days, Dean has the car driven a few blocks away from the warehouse, equipped with cameras that monitor the street. This way, drivers don’t know exactly where the warehouse is. Dean also patrols the warehouse block to make sure no one has followed them, while a second car does the same in a larger area.
Once the car is delivered, it is fixed and cleaned to leave it as new. Then, the carsThey are loaded two by two into a container. A truck takes the container to the intermodal terminal in New Jersey. From there the containers are sent by train to the West Coast to be loaded onto a ship south of California with a falsified manifest. It’s not scrap metal, for example, as indicated, but a Mercedes and a Ferrari. The police could search in Brooklyn…
In Southeast Asian waters, the containers with the cars are then loaded onto a second ship bound for China. This time with a manifest clearly indicating that the container contains cars, with all the necessary details (make, model, colour, etc.).
This business operation operated for a decade with military precision. The police could not find the stolen cars. And the fact that a thousand high-end cars stolen in New York disappeared without a trace did not leave the police in a good light.
It only took a minor glitch in a perfectly functioning machine to stop it from working. In this case, it was a simple, minor traffic accident that would ruin Minjian “Kenny” Yang’s operations.
60 seconds to screw it all up
In an increasingly wealthy China, demand for high-end cars is ever increasing and Yang must provide more and more cars. Waiting to find the ordered car at a house, in a shopping centre car park or on the street is no longer enough. Yang has six weeks to deliver a car from the time he receives the order, remember.
Yang then orders Mario to also rob dealerships and car dealerships specializing in luxury cars. After posing as a potential buyer and asking for a test drive, he finds out where the car keys are by seeing where the salesman takes them from. A few days later, they steal the cars.
Mario and his team They thus take seven cars in less than three minutes. But one of them has an accident on the Triborough Bridge. Sounds familiar, right? Being a sensitive area with a lot of traffic, the police soon arrive and discover the car is stolen and arrest its driver. He spills the beans, leading the police to put Mario and Dean under surveillance, unwittingly leading them to Yang’s warehouse in Brooklyn.
Mijian ‘Kenny’ Yang
But Yang realizes that he is being watched and sets his action in motion. escape plan. In no time at all, the warehouse is empty and everyone has vanished. The police are left with only the recordings of Dean’s phone, where drivers often ask him “when are the Asians coming back.” It all seemed to be over.
Finally, Kenny Yang reappeared six months later in a call to Dean. Yang tells him that he has an order for 260 cars (he has been inactive for six months and the orders are piling up). They have to get their act together. He also orders everyone to change their cell phone, in case they are being listened to.
However, the police manage to obtain the new phone numbers through calls to the families or girlfriends of the suspects under surveillance and, above all, they manage to put a face to Yang for the first time, since he used to eat regularly in the same restaurants as some of his associates.
The pressure to get the cars as soon as possible makes them recklessThey steal cars without giving them time to “cool down”, that is, without checking whether or not they have a hidden tracker. They steal a car and take it directly to the warehouse. And one of the stolen cars did have a tracker.
Shortly after, a police officer shows up at the warehouse and chaos ensues as everyone flees. Yang is alerted at home, but his home is already under surveillance and he is eventually arrested. The police arrested that night from 2001 to eight of the organization’s members.
Yang pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prisonIt is estimated that he amassed around 40 million dollars over the 10 years in which he was stealing cars on an almost industrial scale. However, neither the prosecutor’s office nor the authorities were able to find the money, and even less so the stolen cars.
Source: www.motorpasion.com
