WHO STEALS EQUIPMENT?
In general, plant and equipment is stolen by people who know about plant and equipment, and that stolen equipment is sold back to people in the plant and equipment industry.
Opportunist criminals. Generally targeting lower value items such as compressors, generators and smaller trailers as well as hand tools, which are easy to steal and easy to sell on for cash. However, there is evidence that these lower value criminals are used by serious and organised criminals at the front-end of the theft to minimise the risk to higher value criminals.
Serious and organised criminals. This crime group targets higher value plant and equipment such as excavators, telescopic handlers, rollers, dumpers and tractors. Considerable organisation is required to steal larger equipment items in terms of finding it, moving it, exporting it, selling it, and changing its identity. This type of criminal knows about plant and equipment. He will often target a specific type or even make of equipment, and will have planned, prior to the theft, exactly what he will be doing with the equipment – export now, store and sell, alter or completely change the equipment’s identity, break for parts or any combination of these. This type of criminal will also use equipment to facilitate other crimes, such as the theft of backhoe loaders to facilitate the theft of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) from banks, or the partial destruction of cash in transit vehicles to allow access to the cash compartment of the secure vehicle. The failed attempt to steal diamonds from the Millennium Dome used a backhoe loader to break through security gates and into the Dome.
These criminals can be violent and may carry weapons during their operation. In one incident reported to TER, two men who tried to recover their stolen telehandler were threatened with a sawn off shotgun. In another case a 9mm pistol and a box of 9mm bullets were found behind the dashboard of a backhoe loader recovered by TER.
Serious and organised criminals with close links to terrorist groups. There is evidence which directly links the equipment theft to the funding of terrorist groups. These crime groups are also linked to a range of other serious and organised criminal activities which are also linked to terrorist fund raising such as smuggling, money and fuel laundering. In addition to the issue of funding there is concern over the possible use of plant and equipment as covert vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED), and that equipment could be used as a Trojan Horse to smuggle illicit property, such as weapons and explosives, into the UK – as has already happened with drugs smuggling. These criminals have learnt from their experiences as terrorists, or as terrorist support staff, and are very surveillance and forensic aware, which can often disrupt law enforcement efforts to secure evidence for prosecutions.
These criminals may be violent and will certainly be determined, well supported and resourceful.
In one case, TER was requested, at 0300 hrs on a Saturday morning in March, by a police force to identify a new John Deere tractor and a new John Deere telehandler, total value £115,000, which were on an articulated trailer. The tractor unit and trailer had no owner livery and had different index plates. In the cab was a further, different, index plate along with a metal cutting saw and a warm cup of coffee. The driver had done ‘a runner’ as soon as the vehicle had come to a stop, and had not been caught by the police officers. The vehicle had been pulled over by the police because a light on the trailer was inoperative. TER advised that the equipment was likely to have been stolen and that it should be recovered by the police until it could be formally identified. The equipment was recovered to a police storage yard. Later on the Saturday morning TER identified that the equipment had stolen from a John Deere dealer in a neighbouring county. The police tasked a Scenes of Crime Office (SOCO) to examine the equipment on the following Monday and agreed for the owner to come and identify the equipment, also on the Monday. At 0520 hrs on the Monday morning, the criminal gang broke into the police storage yard, destroyed a section of the yard’s perimeter fence using a recovery vehicle, and then drove away their vehicle, the two stolen John Deeres and all the forensic evidence.
When the driver did his ‘runner’ as his vehicle was stopped, he contacted his back-up car who picked him up. The gang observed the police actions and trailed their vehicle to the police recovery yard. The criminals then had 24 hours to plan their own recovery operation, which they successfully executed at 0520 hrs on the Monday morning.
Both John Deeres were identified and recovered in Australia in January the following year.
It was assessed that this theft was related to a number of other high value equipment thefts from rural equipment dealers which were being, and continue to be, conducted by a criminal gang with close ties to a terrorist organisation.
Fraudsters. Fraudsters target plant hirers, or are the clients of banks or insurance companies. Typical frauds can involve:
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Arson
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Hiring equipment and not returning it
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Financing equipment which does not exist or which is owned by another party
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Over valuing the equipment to extract unwarranted monies from the finance agreement
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Theft claims for items which do not exist, or which are owned by another party, or which have been sold by the policy holder prior to making the theft claim
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The under-valuation of a client’s equipment fleet to defraud the insurer of premium.
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