Houston Community News >> Stolen Cars in U.S., Mexico May be Aiding Terrorists

11/28/2006 by Jeremy Diesel (KHOU)— It is a crime that affects us all: car theft costs Americans $8 billion dollars a year.

We all pay for it through higher insurance rates.

Authorities think some of that money and even the cars themselves may actually be aiding terrorists

VIN plate in a stolen car
If that’s not enough, 11 News learned there is a huge hole in the system that makes it even easier for the criminals

It happens thousands of times a year, another car vanishes, stolen.

“In the city of Houston we have approximately 60 vehicles stolen a day,” said T.J. Salazar, HPD Auto Theft Division.

It is Salazar’s job to find them
What is the scope of this problem? Salazar said it’s huge.

Think of Jose Luis Cayon as Salazar’s mirror image. He works for a Mexican private insurance consortium.

It is his job to find vehicles, too. Those are vehicles that have been reported stolen in Mexico.

He looks everywhere.

“We have already recover cars from New York, from Florida, from Ohio, from Virginia...” he said.

He also located one in the city of South Houston.

“The vehicle was stolen in Baja California in 2002,” said Salazar.

It’s now seized.

Salazar and Cayon have been working together looking for stolen cars on both sides of the border

“Overall I believe that it is going to be well organized theft rings, international theft rings that are doing this. They know that the consequences of being caught are nil,” said Salazar.

So Salazar and Cayon are doing the job that their governments won’t do.

The problem is the stolen car found in South Houston.

“It is legitimate registration and she has a title to it,” said Salazar.

It was stolen in Mexico and legally re-titled here in Texas

How can that happen?

The problem is Texas and Mexico don’t exchange information about their stolen vehicles.

That leaves the Texas Department of Transportations Title and Registration system missing something.

“We just take the information that is transmitted to us via the Department of Public Safety,” said Bill Dobson, Regional Director for TxDOT.

If there is an indication that it’s stolen, it stops the registration process, or it should.

“We can pick by license plate, VIN, or document number,” Dobson said.

When asked if someone walked up today with paperwork information on the vehicle, a title would be issued, Dobson said it would and the title would be transferred.

The state may not know but it is simple for you to find out.

We went to Carfax and entered the same VIN number. The Texas title info is clear, but so is the fact that the vehicle has been reported as stolen.

Dobson can’t answer why TxDOT can’t make that check.

The difference is Carfax has accepted stolen vehicle information from the Mexican Insurance consortium.

In fact that consortium has already given its database of Mexican stolen cars to both the Department of Transportation and the Department of Public Safety.

DPS would not do an interview for this story, saying in a statement simply that it only enters stolen information from incidents that occur in Texas.

Harris County Tax Assessor Collector Paul Bettencourt’s office operates the state’s title and registration system here.

“If they have offered that and we haven’t accepted then they are the geniuses and we are the idiots,” said Bettencourt.

It is a two-way hot car highway. Cars stolen here are just as easy to move to Central America

Cayon and Salazar have gone around the system, exchanged the information the government won’t and found, “At the present time we have 548 that are stolen from the City of Houston alone that are registered in 12 different states in Mexico. Legally,” according to Salazar.

“This is not a few hundred bucks or millions. This is multi-digit million dollar fraud,” Bettencourt said.

The legally re-titled cars are often resold and the cash is pure profit.

This is multi-million dollars on both sides.

That’s a frightening thought to international law enforcement.

“They know that many of the money that comes from auto theft goes to finance the terrorist,” said Cayon.

“Terrorists are known to use vehicles,” said Salazar.

Stopping the flow of cash to terror groups is something the feds have spent billions on.

What is the fix for this? It is frighteningly simple and costs next to nothing.

“Mexico stolen vehicles entered in our national crime information center like we do with Canada. That would be the ideal thing. That way there is no question,” Salazar said.

That’s right. The federal government already cooperates with Canada and trades the stolen vehicle information, but not with Mexico

Why?

“They are still thinking that the Mexican part is not secure,” said Cayon.

“On our side very closed minded and not wanting to cooperate in that type of flowing of information,” Salazar said.

But at least one Mexican and one American aren’t afraid to work together.

So this car is off the street.

One car, one title at a time.

But more are coming. Every day the holes in the system and the border stay open.

The Department of Public Safety would not do an on-camera interview for this story, saying only it only enters information on cars stolen in Texas.

DPS suggested it was the FBI’s jurisdiction to cover foreign stolen vehicles.

In fact, we have discovered the FBI’s counterterrorism unit has an ongoing investigation into cars stolen in the U.S., even some from here in Texas, being used in car bombings in Iraq.