From elaborate car thefts in movies like Gone in 60 Seconds, and The Fast and the Furious, to real life car thieves in 2024, things have come a long way. The ‘Kia Boyz’ became a viral phenomenon by exploiting a simple security protocol on Kias, stealing the cars, and posting videos of their joyrides online. It got so bad that insurance companies were refusing to insure Kia vehicles.
At the other end of the scale, even luxury cars with GPS trackers aren’t fully safe against tech-savvy criminals. A car thief in Miami has stolen a brand-new Rolls-Royce Cullinan and a Maybach GLS 600, two luxury SUVs totaling over half a million dollars, by simply hacking the delivery address!
With the Rolls-Royce Cullinan, with a sticker price upwards of $391,000, the car was set to be delivered to a dealership in Miami. The delivery driver received a text message from what appeared to be the legitimate owner asking for the Cullinan to be dropped off at a random parking lot in Miami, where the thief swooped in and drove it away.
In the case of the Maybach GLS 600, which carries a price tag of over $174,000, the thief hacked into the driver’s portal of the luxury car transport service that was delivering the new Maybach SUV to its owner. With the delivery details at his disposal, the thief reportedly contacted the delivery driver and gave him a new delivery address.
After he took delivery of the car and the company got smart to the theft texting him that he had “messed with the wrong guys”, the thief taunted the company representative back saying, “That’s what the guy with the Cullinan said as well,” before really rubbing it in by saying, “Thanks for the free Maybach dawg”. To make matters worse, the thief later texted a photo of the disassembled underbody of the luxury SUV, signaling that the GPS tracker had been found and disabled. The clincher was the last text message from the thief – “Bro, car already in Dubai, or Europe you guess”.
Just goes to show that no matter how much technology advances, there’s always someone on the other side of the law who’s using it to his own advantage. While Miami law enforcement is investigating the thefts, it’s likely the thief wasn’t just bragging when he said the cars are out of the country already. Do we smell a modern-day Gone in 60 Seconds sequel cooking?
