Gangs that specialize in auto theft typically drive stolen vehicles to salvage yards that turn a blind eye to illicit goings-on, dismantle them as quickly as possible and ship them out of the country in container ships and reassemble them for sale elsewhere.

I was classmates with a pretty girl who sat next to me in class. I later found out that her father (after he was busted) ran the biggest chop shop operation for stolen cars on Chicago's Southside. In the Chicago area, these car thieves would go to parking lots of large suburban shopping malls and steal over 50 cars in a single day. They say that a car is worth more broken up and sold into bits and pieces than it is whole.

Some of the crooked "salvage yards" are owned and operated by Japanese but many are run by Pakistani, Afghani or Nigerian nationals. Why the authorities don't make more effort to control these places is a mystery.

kei trucks are not big pieces of cake...target is completely different class of cars...

kei trucks are not big pieces of cake...target is completely different class of cars...

Very profitable business can be done also aiming for volume of cheap trucks as long as they are popular.

I hate car thieves with all my heart. Kei trucks and vans are wonderful and wish we had them back in the US. I drove a Chevy GEO, the closest thing to a kei in the US, for local errands and it was great and economical.

You can get a high mileage (which folks overseas don't care about) kei truck for 100,000 yen or so, less if it doesn't have shaken, which again doesn't matter for exports. I find it hard to believe that folks steal them, put effort into chopping them up and export them. That's risk for very little gain.

There is way more money in stealing Land Cruisers, like that politician's which was taken. Or an old hatchback Prius, which can be opened and started with a fake electronic key bought from China.

Mate had a Porsche GT3 in a highly secured underground carpark.

Came down one morning,the whole front bumper,grill and lights had been surgically removed.

Incredible thievery.

It SOUNDS extremely easy to monitor.

Just sayin'

kohakuebisu wrote: You can get a high mileage (which folks overseas don't care about) kei truck for 100,000 yen or so

Which is 20,000 yen less than a new Playstation5 or an iPhone 16. I'd much rather get a set of wheels for that price.

@Stormcow I think you are exaggerating a little bit stealing 50 cars a day from malls would alert police to stake out such places. I just hope you didn’t stake out the pretty girl like the cops do.

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