Posted on 02/16/24
| News Source: FOX45
Baltimore City’s car theft crisis is now facing a new high-tech threat. Making more than just Kai’s and Hyundai’s the only vulnerable vehicles, thieves have begun targeting cars with a keyless entry and keyless start.
“He went to his car and it wasn't there. So, he was like, this is confusing. I don't think it got towed.” Kelly Scible recalled.
Last October, Kelly Scible says her husband’s beloved, blue Corvette was suddenly missing from their Canton street. With no broken glass or signs of a break-in in sight, it wasn’t until a neighbor shared surveillance video of someone seamlessly driving off with the car that they realized what had occurred.
“When the police came, they said that there's no way that there was a forced entry into the car and that they believe that the key fob was cloned from our house,” said Sible.
It’s called car hacking. Tech-savvy thieves have found a way to steal the signal your key fob transmits. They then clone your keys for a pair of their own.
And as Sible learned, “I thought they had to be right next to your house, but honestly it doesn't. It can be like down the street,” said Sible. It can happen when you least expect it.
“When we use our keyless entry and keyless start FOB for our vehicle, we throw it in our purse, we throw it when we walk in the house, we throw it on an entry table, that FOB is transmitting all the time,” said the spokesman for the National Police Association, Betsy Smith.
According to Smith, the best way to prevent high-tech theft is ironically, through low-tech solutions. She warns against placing your keys by the front door where they can be easily hacked and says you need to invest in a safe place to put them.
“When you go home, put them in a little metal box,” she said, “You can buy one of those little pouches that keeps your transmitting key fob from getting the signal out. As long as they can't get to that signal, they can't steal it.”
Advice Scible says she immediately took.
“We ended up buying a lockbox,” said Scible.
But just a few weeks later, she says a second car was stolen.
“They broke the lock with a screwdriver, broke in my home, and then stole my purse off of the wall and then keys off of the counter,” said Scible.
Marking two of more than 11,000 cars stolen in Baltimore City last year, a more than 200% increase from the previous year.
“We really felt violated,” said Scible.
The troubling crime trend has yet to turn the corner in 2024, with BPD reporting about 750 cars stolen in January alone.
“We just felt like we weren't safe anymore and like monetarily we couldn't afford to keep having these losses,” said Scible.
Concerns that have since driven the Scibles out of Baltimore and into a new home in Howard County.
“We just, you know, at night we just couldn't sleep well anymore,” she said.
FOX45 also reached out to the Baltimore City Police Department for tips on how to keep your car safe from the new threat. However, BPD spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge claims the department is not seeing an uptick keyless cars being stolen. "What we are seeing an increase in is stolen vehicles where a vehicle was left running and unoccupied," said Eldridge.
Before moving out of the city, Scible says she attended a public safety meeting at the Southeast District's police station. Scible says she voiced concerns over what her and her husband experienced first hand, but was disappointed in the response from police. "It was said, oh well, people shouldn't leave their cars running in front of their house, or you need to have cameras in front of your house, you shouldn't be going out and coming home late," said Scible, "Kind of saying peoples choices were causing the problem rather than the fact that there's a lack of patrols. So, I felt really upset about the statements that were made at that meeting."