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According to new allegations that paint a picture of systemic collusion rather than isolated breaches, anonymous insider has accused workers at South African vehicle tracking companies of colluding with criminal syndicates to clone keys and track target cars. This has become an industry-wide betrayal that appears to be fuelling cross-border theft into Zimbabwe and several other countries.
South African ChangeCars owner and founder Michael Pashut has gone public with claims from anonymous insider, dubbed Mr X who claimed that tracking company employees are being bribed to betray the very vehicles they are paid to protect. The scheme, Pashut said, is not confined to a single firm but represents an industry-wide vulnerability.
Speaking to Cape Talk, Pashut cited the example of high-risk vehicles being stolen from parking lots as a cause for concern.
Describing a typical heist, Pashut noted that thieves often unlock and drive off with Toyota Hiluxes and Fortuners from parking lots within minutes, without breaking windows or triggering alarms. This near effortless access, he argued, strongly suggests criminals possess cloned spare keys and real time location data both allegedly sourced from compromised insiders at tracking firms.
Mr X explained that during tracker installation, workers are instructed by syndicates to copy spare key codes. Those codes are then turned into functional keys that allow thieves to locate and steal vehicles at will. Pashut paraphrased the insider’s grim assessment: that installing a tracker can paradoxically increase a vehicle’s risk depending on who has access to its data.
Cartrack, an industry leader in South Africa, has previously acknowledged that criminal syndicates are sophisticated enough to remove entire telematics devices, rendering standard systems ineffective.
Cartrack said Internet-connected systems in vehicles were easily accessed by maintenance staff by design, but also by wrongdoers.
“The criminal syndicates remove the entire telematics device. Therefore, it makes no difference what kind of SIM is in the device,” it said.
Therefore, the carmaker’s device provided little assistance in recovering stolen vehicles in an environment where well-organised criminals conduct vehicle theft.
It added that its fitment technique made its tracking devices hard to find, and that its technology enabled tracking even outside of South Africa’s borders.
Some of these stolen vehicles likely enabled by compromised tracking data have been intercepted at the Beitbridge border post. While such apprehensions offer occasional wins for law enforcement, they underscore how deeply organised theft networks have penetrated both South Africa’s tracking industry and the region’s smuggling routes.
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