Why the big bosses behind Canada’s car theft crisis remain untouchable in their 'huge mansions' - Toronto Star

In the final part of the Star's Grand Theft Toronto series, we look at why it's so difficult to catch the bosses at the top of the auto theft pyramid.

The hunt for the elusive Mr. Big is on. Make that Mr. Bigs. 

Police across Toronto and the GTA have task forces with catchy names, like Project Joker, Poacher, Vector and Chickadee. Ontario has poured millions of dollars into boosting enforcement. Hundreds of undercover officers have nabbed hundreds of thieves as young as 11 for all kinds of car theft, from simple driveway jobs to violent home invasions and even more violent carjackings. Special prosecutors have been assigned in an attempt to make charges stick.

The cars stolen in Canada are either shipped to West Africa or the Middle East, or their identity — their VIN — is changed, and they are resold in Canada. Some of the cars stolen from Canada are even showing up on the streets of Russia, where Western export bans have created a ravenous demand for new cars.

It’s true that car theft rates that spiked during the pandemic have receded, but they are still much higher than pre 2020. It’s the new normal, investigators say. Car owners are trying everything — from applying a clear “security film” to strengthen windows and door glass, to installing steel bollards at the end of their driveway. But the overseas demand for Canadian cars remains strong, and thieves keep steps ahead of police.

Getting the controlling minds is proving near impossible. “The Mr. Bigs are tough to get,” a law enforcement official told the Star. “All we get most times is the thieves and the runners.” 

That’s because the theft squads are organized into silos — the people doing one job have no contact with those doing the next, and no one knows who’s calling the shots. They connect through Snapchat — the disappearing message function makes it the current favourite — or through encrypted apps like WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram. Police are pushing for a new lawful access act (Bill C-22), which, if passed, may give them the power to find out who is behind some of the numbers on the chat.

Right now, they are invisible to investigators. 

“Someone sends out a blast in a group chat, and nobody knows who the people are,” explained Insp. Kristy Smith of Toronto Police Service’s Hold-Up Squad, which handles some violent car theft investigations. The first five people to respond get the job. “They are given instructions, and they all come together,” Smith said.

The Star has interviewed senior detectives from all the GTA forces, along with agents from the Canada Border Services Agency. 

“There might be four or five different groups all operating independently of each other, and they do not know what the other does,” explained Peel Regional Police acting Insp. Ian Harloff, of the force’s Commercial Auto Crime Bureau.

It begins, Harloff explained, with the Mr. Big, sometimes called the “Finance” — the person or persons who will pay those in other silos, and ultimately profit by selling the stolen vehicles to overseas or domestic customers. As an example, the Finance puts the word out that he has “a buyer in Africa that I can export to.” Then, a specific instruction, which in one case was: “Three Mercedes G-Wagons.” It’s a “steal to order” scheme where they are looking for certain brands, right down to the trim. The Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUV, at a cost of $200,000 to $250,000, is one of the most popular. Originally designed for military use, the “G-Wagon” is sought-after in the Middle East and Africa for its mix of off-road capability and flashy luxury.

Next come the “thieves,” the younger people, often teens, who take the biggest risk by actually stealing the cars. They get the text blast and source the vehicles, often just by driving around. Wealthy neighbourhoods equal nicer cars. In a case where a G-Wagon was stolen by home invasion in Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood, a 12-year-old girl lamented to her father, a lawyer, “Daddy, can we please not have any nice cars?” The job of the thief is only to take the car, and drive it to the “drop” location. It might be a school parking lot or a golf club. 

Any obvious GPS tracking device is removed or disabled, said Peel’s Harloff, a 26-year policing veteran. 

It’s now time for the next silo. Some detectives call them the “runners.” This team moves the stolen G-Wagon to a “cooling off” spot where it will sit for a day or two. This is often a highly visible location, like a mall parking lot where the car will not stand out. This silo has members who make occasional drive-by checks for police activity, usually a sign that a hurried thief missed a GPS tracking device. In one theft, the GPS was torn out, but the car owner had his golf clubs in the trunk with an Apple AirTag in one pocket. Police found the vehicle while it was “cooling off.” 

Sometimes, Harloff said, canny thieves put their own tracking device on a stolen car and wait for an alert that it has moved.

If police or the owner don’t show up, this silo moves the vehicle. If it is being sold overseas, a freight forwarder puts it into a shipping container. It costs roughly $12,000 to ship two to three cars overseas. Generally speaking, freight forwarding firms handle the logistics of overseas shipments, but don’t make a habit of investigating their clients’ cargo; police say it is tough to prove the freight forwarder has done anything wrong. “Though, when a guy comes in off the street and orders 60 containers, you’d think they’d ask a few more questions,” one detective said. 

If it’s not headed overseas, it needs a new identity. All vehicles have a VIN — a 17-character identifier. Each grouping of numbers tells a different story about the vehicle — manufacturer, brand, engine type, model year, assembly plant code and a serial number specific to the vehicle.

You can’t just make these up because a fake one, if registered with the province, would alert staff to a problem with the paperwork — a sign it was stolen. So thieves copy real VINs from places where the automobile registration system does not “talk” to Ontario’s system — a few U.S. states fit the bill. This is called “cloning.” It’s as easy as a thief in a U.S. state seeing, for example, a 2026 Mercedes in a parking lot, snapping a photo of the public-facing VIN on the car’s dashboard, and sending that to thieves in Ontario. Sometimes, lists of VINs are sold on the Dark Web. 

Cars have their VIN in several places, including being etched into the steel structure of the car. But for this “cloning,” thieves just rebrand in the two easier-to-find places — a new number to replace the VIN on the dashboard plate on an embossed silver sticker inside the driver’s door jamb. 

The new owner of the G-Wagon may never find out the VIN has been cloned. 

Once the G-Wagon (in this example) is given a new “identity,” it can be registered through ServiceOntario, or sold overseas without anybody being the wiser. One ServiceOntario employee was convicted in 2025 for her part in a criminal conspiracy to enter stolen vehicle information into the provincial system. 

On paper, it is no longer a stolen car, so the new sale raises no red flags.

A product on the market, the TAG Tracking System, has had some success in helping recover stolen cars even after the identity is changed. TAG installs miniature wireless transponders the size of a grain of rice, about eight of them, in different areas in the car. Nobody except the installer knows the location, not even the car owner. Unlike a GPS or cellular tracker, they use a specific radio frequency exclusive to TAG, and have their own tiny power systems. TAG etches its logo on the driver and passenger-side windows, and thieves often move on if they see the TAG logo, police say. It’s not always foolproof. One GTA detective said they busted an auto shop and caught a mechanic in the act of using a laser to remove the TAG logo. Insurance companies in Ontario are pushing the system — it costs between $400 and $650 to install, but some insurers provide a discounted rate of $250.

Police say that at the top of the “crime food chain” is organized crime — groups that traditionally did drugs and prostitution but have added car theft because it is so lucrative and there is less chance of getting caught.

“You could buy a (kilogram) of coke, and then you run the risk that the police are going to arrest you. Or you are going to be rolled by another drug dealer,” explained Durham Regional Police Det. Josh Brown of their auto theft and robbery unit. “Or you can steal a car that you don’t own and sell it for almost market value overseas. And there’s a tremendous market for it.”

Interpol, an international policing agency, maintains a database of nearly 11 million cars reported stolen worldwide. Interpol’s Renato Schipani said in a statement on the policing agency’s website that these stolen cars are used to fund the “global criminal underworld” and, citing recent car bombings, said they have “frequently become a weapon in the hands of terrorists.” Canada was late to feed its stolen vehicle data into Interpol’s Stolen Vehicle Database. Since they started doing that in 2024, 9,000 Canadian vehicles have been matched, including many found on Russian streets.

But with each new inroad by investigators, crime groups are proving to be highly adaptable. Until recently, most cars stolen into the GTA were loaded onto sea-bound containers at the railway intermodal truck terminal in Vaughan. But authorities were wise to that and used X-ray machines to check containers in Vaughan for stolen cars. Theft groups have developed a workaround. They drive three stolen cars to a parking lot off Highway 401, often in Scarborough. A transport truck is there, and the three cars are driven onto it. Then the truck driver moves them to the Montreal or Halifax port, where they are loaded onto sea containers. Police say this scheme is not only a crime, but highly dangerous — the inside of a transport trailer is a basic box without the upper straps a sea container has as part of its equipment — not suitable for securing vehicles weighing thousands of pounds.

“Imagine you are on the 401 and the truck driver brakes suddenly and all of a sudden you have three loose Toyota Highlanders,” said Det. Scott Cresswell, who leads the York Regional Police auto theft unit.

Do the truckers know these are stolen vehicles?

“Whether we can prove it or not,” said Cresswell, “these guys know what the deal is … these are cars going into these trucks at 3 a.m. in a parking lot.”

Sometimes, teens under the age of 18 are hired to drive the stolen vehicle down the 401 to Montreal, then return to the city by bus. They are chosen because, if caught, youth get low sentences. 

Police say there are multiple Mr. Bigs operating in Canada. Some are connected to large, well-organized crime groups. Others are lone wolves. There’s one police are watching in the GTA, a man from Ghana, sources say, who is a sort of “soup to nuts” operator. He takes the orders in Africa, comes to Canada to oversee the thefts using encrypted apps, then travels back on a cargo ship with his bounty.

One big change in recent years has come at Canada’s borders. CBSA has always had the authority to examine cargo leaving Canada, but until a few years ago they remained focused on their main mandate — what is coming into the country. Now, CBSA is rolling out a program with mobile X-ray trucks that pull up to containers to see if what is inside matches the customs declaration. A load declared as “furniture and appliances” might turn out to be, for example, two stolen sports cars. It’s complicated, because people do legally ship cars overseas. There’s a big legal market in Africa for used Canadian cars. That’s where the VIN comes in. To determine if the cars have been stolen, investigators have to check the multiple locations on a car where a VIN is embossed on metal.

“Are the VINs matching up,” said Abeid Morgan, Acting Director of Intelligence and Investigations with the CBSA. “Is the vehicle description the same?”

The Montreal port now has a mobile X-ray machine housed in a large truck. But this work is labour-intensive. They can’t scan and physically search all containers. Montreal saw 768,274 sea containers pass out of Canada in 2025. Halifax adds about half that traffic. Most exported stolen cars leave from those two ports and head to Africa and the Middle East, with Russia often being the ultimate destination according to Interpol. (Vancouver, Canada’s other large seaport, has generally not been as big an issue because the market is on the other side of Canada.)

Morgan said that in some recent investigations they have gotten farther up the theft chain, at least to the lieutenants who control the low-level thieves. He said it’s a struggle to get the “ones at the very top, living in the huge mansions.” 

One of the challenges for CBSA is determining if people working in Canada’s ports are part of the problem. Morgan said a concern about “internal conspiracies is front and centre.” No arrests have been made related to port workers, he said.

Inroads have been made into the lower level of the theft chain. The numbers reflect that.

Car thefts spiked dramatically across Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Greater Toronto Area, reported thefts rose from under 14,000 in 2019 to more than 33,000 in 2023 — a record in Statistics Canada data.

GTA detectives attribute the drop since then — to just under 21,000 thefts in 2025 — to the effect targeted enforcement is having on the street level of the crime. Some detectives have had success with informants who are part of theft gangs. In one case, an informant was paid $12,000 for information.

But the rate of thefts is still much higher than the pre-pandemic normal. Last year ended with thefts still up more than 50 per cent from 2019. And there’s more violence than before. Carjackings (last year in Toronto, they were up 106 per cent versus 2019) and home invasions (up 73 per cent) used to be much rarer crimes.

In this series, we’ve seen terrifying stories of crimes committed by mostly young criminals. Many of these thieves and carjackers have since pleaded guilty and been sentenced (and some are already out). But more people above them in the criminal hierarchy — the ones ordering the thefts, or shipping Canadian cars to Africa, the Middle East and Russia — were never arrested.

And above them, the Mr. Bigs behind the crisis remain largely untouchable.

Peel’s Harloff said finding the “puppet master” in each of these crime groups, even those below the top level, is key. “When you do crack that layer, it’s very, very fruitful because you can bring down the entire organization.

Harloff pointed to Project Stratis, a “start to finish” investigation that gave police a blueprint for how these schemes work. “We were able to see it from steal to export and the person on top controlling things,” he said. Still, Stratis is on the smaller end of police projects — six people were arrested and $800,000 in stolen vehicles recovered after a series of armed carjackings.

The charges were laid in March after a series of armed carjackings. They are still before the court.

In this game of “whack-a-mole,” some detectives point to a big social issue — the youth stealing the cars. 

Toronto Insp. Kristy Smith is troubled by the very young age of many of the thieves taking arguably the biggest risk by stealing the vehicles. 

“If you look at the street gangs, they recruit young kids, their younger siblings and their friends, and a lot of this is kids that don’t have the nice things in life. So this is their way of getting it,” Smith said.

When detectives review surveillance videos from home invasions, she notes that most youth are wearing flashy Nike tracksuits and the latest running shoes — items that are not in their parents’ budget. Stealing a car for cash has a big allure, and something has to be done to break the cycle.

“Everyone finds it exhausting when you’re arresting the same people all the time,” Smith said, adding that “when you arrest these young kids, they’re already on charges for similar things.”

Smith is aware of the push from some politicians for harsher sentences and more jails. She thinks there is another solution. 

“These youth need something better and more productive to do.”

Smith notes a recent program Toronto police initiated in 23 Division, which covers the Jamestown area, notorious for gang activity. There was a police officer in the division, Const. Mikaela Murray, who was a classically trained dancer.

She got the rights through a grant to put on a Disney Junior production of “The Lion King,” Smith explained. They bought costumes with a grant from ProAction Cops and Kids, a charity that brings youth and police together. They have now done this program in two different schools in the division, with 75 students involved in each production.

“The first year, we saw kids getting scholarships to go to school for this … with these types of impactful programs, if you can just get a couple of people out of that, to me, that is what success looks like. Deterring these kids (from crime) and giving them something to do.”

In the last five years, car thieves have moved from the more passive driveway thefts using technology to “Stone Age” techniques where they break into a house for the keys, or carjack people on the street or in a mall. 

That trend continues, but now there’s a new style of car theft taking hold — “fraud financing.”

That’s when a person, often someone here on an overseas student visa, walks into a dealership, puts down a big cash deposit on a $120,000 Mercedes, and finances the rest of the purchase. The student makes the first payment to the bank, then ships the car overseas.

“And the bank doesn’t find out about it until they come back and try to collect off this individual who is no longer in the country,” said Peel’s Harloff. “We’ve seen an uptick in that scam.”

All the GTA detectives and the CBSA agents the Star spoke to said “fraud financing” is the latest scheme. When the cars are shipped overseas, they are, at that moment, not technically stolen because the first bank payment has been made. They are not deemed stolen until the banks realize they are victims of a theft. (One detective said certain banks and car financing companies are known by thieves for, as one detective said, “sloppy due diligence” when it comes to checking the buyer’s credit.)

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It was just a year ago that the RCMP and Interpol, working with CBSA, started targeting fraud financing.

In just one year, Project NoCargo intercepted and recovered 392 vehicles, valued at $28 million. They were recovered in Toronto, Montreal and Halifax. That project was part of other GTA and CBSA projects that, in total, intercepted 1,590 stolen vehicles.

The Star wants to hear your car theft story. You can reach out to Kevin Donovan at kdonovan@thestar.ca.

Please include any information you think is valuable, including video of the crime. 

Kevin Donovan is the Star’s chief investigative reporter based in Toronto. He can be reached at 416-312-3503 or via email: kdonovan@thestar.ca.