• Fingers Tin Can Ports As Destination
• More than 200 vehicles valued at about $6 million recovered.
Federal Police in the United States of America (USA) have charged 19 suspects including some unidentified West Africans for being kingpins of a car theft syndicate which specializes in the theft and subsequently shipped to ports of some West African countries, especially the Tin Can Island port in Lagos.
• Fingers Tin Can Ports As Destination
• More than 200 vehicles valued at about $6 million recovered.
Federal Police in the United States of America (USA) have charged 19 suspects including some unidentified West Africans for being kingpins of a car theft syndicate which specializes in the theft and subsequently shipped to ports of some West African countries, especially the Tin Can Island port in Lagos.
According to investigations, the vehicles stolen or snatched from their owners and which included high-end luxury SUVs from Porsche, Lexus, Audi are subsequently slipped out of the country through American ports to waiting buyers in places like Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Gambia.
Shipping Position Daily confirmed last week that suspicious American police had put the brakes on the international car smuggling operation, charging 19 people from New Jersey, New York, and Kansas in an elaborate scheme that retagged and exported hot cars with bogus papers to various destinations in West Africa.
At its center, authorities said, was a Brooklyn woman with lots of contacts in that part of the world; a fence for stolen property known as "the Lady."
The cars were taken in a variety of ways, including hot-wiring or through the use of duplicated keys, First Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Gilmore Childers said.
"About 10 percent of the cars were stolen through carjackings," he said.
More than 200 vehicles with an estimated retail value of $6 million were recovered.
The ring worked to make the shipment appear lawful at all stages, said John Morton, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "They go to great length to camouflage the cars" as legitimate exports, he said.
In a well –scripted expose on the activities of the syndicate, the police said that there are series of activities of the syndicate involving the shipment of stolen vehicles to West Africa:
According to the police,” earlier this month, a Washington, D.C., man pleaded guilty in a conspiracy that involved stealing keys from dealerships then driving the vehicles off the lots after closing. The vehicles would then be loaded into shipping containers and sent overseas through the ports in Newark, Baltimore and Norfolk, Va.”
“Last week, 14 people were charged with "using the streets of New York as their own personal auto showroom," in a scheme to steal mint-condition luxury vehicles that were shipped by brokers to clients in West Africa.”
“In April, Pennsylvania authorities arrested more than two dozen people and charged them with operating a car theft ring out of Philadelphia and southern New Jersey also aimed at high-end luxury cars and sport utility vehicles. Many of the cars, which were shipped to waiting buyers in West Africa, were taken from car dealer lots or service departments. The gang was believed to be responsible for the disappearance of at least 57 vehicles, worth more than $2.3 million. Authorities believe that about 30 percent of those vehicles were obtained through car-jackings, gun-point robberies or theft mostly in and around Newark.”
According to prosecutors, in the middle of it all was Hope Kantete, 42, of Brooklyn, but whose nationality could not be immediately ascertained and who was called "the Lady." She allegedly bought stolen and carjacked vehicles from street gang members and others, had the vehicles retagged with new VIN numbers — the unique serial number used by the automotive industry to identify individual motor vehicles — and arranged to have them shipped overseas or sold them to individuals, who would make their own shipping arrangements.
In several cases, authorities said, customers placed orders for specific vehicles, including a Toyota CR-V with leather seats.
According to the prosecutors, Kantete, usually “arranged for legitimate-looking paperwork, shipping manifests and VIN numbers for the three cars, which were subsequently shipped to Tin Can Island, a port in the city of Lagos, Nigeria. All three were sent through an international shipping company on Sept. 12. They arrived in Nigeria in October.”
“The cars had a fair market value of $149,000. Wire transfers totalling less than $56,000 came back from the consignee of the container with the three stolen cars, court records show.”
While many of the vehicles involved were carjacked, some of those tied to the ring were leery of accepting cars taken at gunpoint. One, a silver 2009 Jaguar XF Supercharged carjacked in Morristown in June 2011, was considered a hot potato. Still, they retagged it for export to Nigeria from the Bayonne Auto Terminal, where it was ultimately recovered two weeks after it was stolen.
Shipping Position Daily learnt last week that the strings of theft of luxury cars from different states in the US and their being traced to Nigerian port of Tin Can may beam more search light on shipments into Nigeria henceforth.
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