Detroit was for many years known as Motor City, the home of American automobile manufacturing, and one of the foremost industrial cities in the world. That's all changed now, and while plenty of automobiles are built in the area, lately the Motor City has become a hub for car theft, with a lot of the stolen cars ending up on ships bound for the Middle East.
Now eight people have been busted in this theft/smuggling ring, and it seems likely there are a lot more involved.
An uptick in international organized crime groups smuggling stolen vehicles from the Motor City to countries in the Middle East is alarming law enforcement officials looking to crack down on the thefts, as experts say criminals are leveraging juveniles to do their dirty work.
In September, eight men were indicted in federal court for allegedly operating a car theft and international smuggling operation in Detroit, Michigan, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan said in a news release.
According to the 12-count indictment, the eight suspects conspired among themselves and others to coordinate the deliveries of stolen vehicles at one of four commercial or industrial lots throughout the Detroit metropolitan area. Once the vehicles were delivered, prosecutors said the men would pack at least two of the stolen vehicles into shipping containers and send them to nearby port cities by freight or rail.
It's not clear what the status of the "juveniles" described is, but it's not impossible that they were selected to do the actual theft because they face lesser consequences if caught - or maybe just because they'll take a smaller cut.
Here's the onion:
"A lot of the cars were shipped to the Middle East," Dearborn Police Cpl. Daniel Bartok told FOX 2, including locations like Iraq and Dubai.
The suspects have been identified as Haydar Al Haydari, 41, of Garden City; Karar Alnakash, 43, of Detroit; Abbas Al Othman, 42; of Dearborn Heights; Mohammed Al Hilo, 36, of Detroit; Moustapha Al Fetlawi, 46, of Dearborn Heights; Terrill Davis, 33, of Detroit; David Roshinsky Williams, 32, of Harper Woods; and Mohammed Al Abboodi, 35, of Detroit, according to federal prosecutors.
All eight men are charged with one count of conspiracy to transport stolen vehicles and one or more counts of transportation of a stolen vehicle, prosecutors said.
There is no indication as to the immigration status of any of the eight suspects.
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It's a near-certainty that this is a lot bigger than eight people. This is an international theft and smuggling operation; there have to be people at the other end of the shipping route, unpacking these cars, doing whatever reassembly is required, and moving them into the market. It's unlikely in the extreme that anyone on the far end of this process will be called to account; when they lose their stateside conspirators, they will simply find new ones.
But the money - now, that may be their weak spot.
As authorities race to track down stolen vehicles before they are loaded onto shipping containers, while also investigating how criminal groups on American soil are working with international crime organizations, McPhee insisted there is one key component in what is driving the uptick in vehicle thefts throughout Michigan.
"The one key connection is somebody's getting paid," McPhee told Fox News Digital. "There's money to be made. So if you have a local organized gang, they can be connected internationally to another group very easily. We have the internet, it's not hard."
As of this writing, 350 vehicles have been recovered. And if the profits from this venture can be tracked and seized, so much the better.
Fighting criminal operations like this, however, is a lot like playing Whack-a-Mole. Knock down one criminal operation, and another will arise to take its place. It's the buyers on the other end of the pipeline that keep putting up new moles to whack, and those buyers are largely out of our reach.
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