CARY, N.C. -

Car thieves may be getting more sophisticated, but the latest Uniform Crime Report from the FBI shows that the number of stolen vehicles has dropped dramatically over the last decade.

According to the report, 707,758 motor vehicles were stolen in the U.S. in 2015 (220.2 per 100,000 people). That’s nearly a 41-percent drop from 2006.

Last year’s figure does represent a 3.1-percent increase over 2014, when there were 686,803 thefts.

More than $4.9 billion was lost due to motor vehicle thefts in 2015, and the average dollar loss per vehicle stolen was $7,001. About $2.6 billion worth was recovered, for a recovery rate of 58.2 percent.

Broken down by region, the most thefts — 39.9 percent — occurred in the West, with 35.3 percent in the South. The Northeast was lowest at 8 percent.

California saw the most thefts last year at 170,993, while Washington, D.C., had the highest number of thefts per capita: 485.5 per 100,000.

The UCR does not report makes and models of stolen vehicles, but the National Insurance Crime Bureau reported earlier this year that the most-stolen vehicle in 2015 was the 1996 Honda Accord. And the most common 2015 make and model stolen last year was the Nissan Altima.   

Auto Remarketing talked to Pat Clancy, vice president of law enforcement at LoJack and a former police officer, for his thoughts on the data and the changing nature of auto theft.

Auto Remarketing: While there was an uptick in vehicle thefts last year, the crime has been lessening over the past decade.

Pat Clancy: This drop has been going on for 25 years. The U.S. peaked in 1991 with 1.7 million auto thefts and now here we are with 700,000. But it’s still a significant crime; it’s still a $4.5 billion industry just in the U.S. It’s significant and something that needs to be dealt with. This is the first year in a 10-year span that the numbers have actually gone up for the year. The increase was driven by five or six states, like California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico. They had double-digit upticks in auto theft last year.

I think the overall reduction is because of what they term an immobilizer, which you might know as a smart key or chip key. It used to be no big deal to cross wires, use a screwdriver, use a jiggle key or a shaved key, which the thieves used to manipulate ignitions of cars back in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.

Gradually over the last 25 or 30 years, the manufacturers have introduced that chip key technology into just about every make and model that’s coming out now. The thieves have to adapt. It’s no longer just a crime of opportunity like it used to be, although it still is.

AR: How so?

PC: Because still, 25 to 30 percent of auto thefts, I think the experts will tell you, are because people leave their cars running and people walk by. They might not even be out to steal a car that day but they see a car running and boom, that’s an opportunity.

We see a lot of it. It’s mostly in the cold-weather states. People warm up their car and go inside. … The criminals have organized to the point where in the mornings they drop off people in neighborhoods and they’re just looking for cars that have been left running outside of people’s homes.

The point is, it’s harder and harder to steal somebody’s car without the keys. So they’re reverting to different ways to steal cars.

AR: Can you talk about the changing nature of auto theft with emergence of connected cars?

PC: As cars are getting more and more connected and the OEMs are installing more devices into cars, the car is not just a means of transportation. It’s a communications hub, a business hub. They have a lot of computing power inside that car.  People connect to those cars and they plug their smart phones into those cars, so they can talk hands free, use remote start features, so they can do a million different things.

What that does is leave vulnerabilities for people to be able to intercept the communication link. In essence they have the ability to hijack that car. They can get into the brain of the car, the VCU, and get into the VIN of the car, the service records. When they get a VIN, they can get a key made.

You also have the electronic ignitions, where a key is not necessary to start the vehicle. That’s another opportunity for somebody to hack the car.

It’s upping the ante on the part of the thieves. They have to be tech savvy. But the traditional methods have not gone away.

AR: What are you seeing at the dealership level?

PC: We are seeing a strong uptick in fraudulent theft from dealerships. For example, people go into a dealership with a false identity, with false credit, and they pose as someone else. They purchase, typically, a high-end car that’s loaded. They might even put down two or three months’ payment in advance. They leave and they’re out the door with an $80,- $90,- $100,000 vehicle. Two or three months later, the dealership discovers this person did not exist. We see a ton of that.

Last year we were part of an interception of over 40 vehicles that were obtained that way from dealerships in Southern California. They were all Porches, Lexuses, BMWs, Mercedes. And they were a group that went to dealerships, presented false identities and false credit, obtained these luxury vehicles, and sent them over to Hong Kong in shipping containers. One of those cars had a LoJack in it and they were able to bust the whole group.

AR: What about vehicle recovery overall?

PC: The recovery rate is going down overall on non-LoJack vehicles. The cars are being exported. In the last couple of years, let’s say there’s roughly 300,000 cars that are not being recovered. Typically in the past, two or three years later some of those cars might show up. But that’s not happening now, and the reason for that is the exporting. And these high-end vehicles, they want to get their hands on them … and they export them as soon as they can. So an $80,000 Range Rover is worth 200,000 in South America or West Africa. … So that’s a huge part of the non-recovery growth.

AR: What advice do you have for dealers?

PC: It would be make sure to investigate the credit. A lot of times it’s with foreign nationals, and people at dealerships may not be as familiar with identities from other countries, so they might not ask to see a passport or they might not be familiar with visas. So these people are actually borrowing or paying for a legit visa from someone else and then building an identity to go with that visa.

So the people at the dealerships, they’re anxious to make a sale. They don’t want to take the time to dig too deeply. But they need to run a license, there’s ways to check a license to make sure they’re legitimate. They all have holograms and barcodes on the back. They really need to do their due diligence.

AR: What is something LoJack offer dealers?

PC: What we call our pre-install program, or PIP. Instead of partnering with a dealership and selling them one at a time, we go in to a dealership put a LoJack on every car in the lot. So everybody who buys a car is presented with the opportunity to buy a LoJack. That protects the dealer in terms of lot protection and theft of loaner cars. It works out both ways for the dealer and for LoJack. And for the police. We’ve really been pushing this the last couple of years. It’s a large portion of our installations now.

AR: Do you foresee an end to auto theft?

PC: I just think as long as people have something of value, other people are going to want to get it.  They’re going to find different ways to do it.