Men behind £1 million worth of keyless car thefts are jailed

Juozas Baltors, 28, and Darius Lukauskas, 31, conspired to steal 26 keyless-entry vehicles from 10 counties across England before having them delivered to a ‘chop-shop’ in Peterborough where the vehicles were dismantled and thought to have been shipped out of the county.

Some of those thefts happened in Buckinghamshire on March 6 last year - with a £28,000 BMW 760LI stolen in Chesham Bois and a £20,800 BMW 435D stolen in Amersham.

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They also stole a Range Rover Sport from Datchet, Slough, an Audi Q7 from Maidenhead, and other vehicles including two BMWs from Tring.

Following a seven-day trial for conspiracy to steal vehicles at Peterborough Crown Court, the pair have been jailed for more than four years.

During the early hours of the morning, and using sophisticated ‘relay’ equipment, they would scan and obtain victims’ vehicle key frequencies from inside their homes which enabled them to then start up the vehicles and drive them away.

PC Jeremy Turner, from Cambridgeshire Constabulary’s Acquisitive Crime Team, said: “Members of organised crime groups deliver stolen vehicles to ‘chop shops’, often concealing the vehicle’s identity initially using cloned number plates and blocking tracker signals using ‘jamming’ devices which stop the vehicle’s location from being emitted.

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"The valuable vehicle parts are then loaded onto lorries and exported out of the country.”

Juozas Baltors (pictured left), 28, and Darius Lukauskas (pictured right), 31

Baltors came to the attention of police in Peterborough on April 13 last year, when they spotted a BMW X5 being driven on cloned number plates.

Checks revealed the BMW had been stolen from Hampshire 10 days earlier and a search of the car found a jamming device in the glovebox.

Baltors was arrested and when his Peterborough home was searched, police uncovered two further industrial-strength jamming devices and images on his mobile phone showed the dismantling of multiple high-value vehicles.

The following day, officers used a set of keys found on Baltors at his time of arrest to open up an industrial unit in Peterborough, where they found two vehicles in the process of being dismantled - an Audi Q7 which had been stolen a few hours previous in Maidenhead, and a BMW 7 series stolen from Leicester on April 9.

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DC Craig Trevor, also from Cambridgeshire’s Acquisitive Crime Team, said: “Baltors was initially charged with conspiracy to steal 10 vehicles, however it was clear Baltors was not working alone and this was just the tip of the iceberg.

“From his mobile phone, further stolen vehicles were identified as well as another offender, Darius Lukauskas, who would call Baltors when he was on his way to Peterborough with a stolen vehicle.”

On June 26, Lukauskas, of Basingstoke Road, Reading, was arrested in Berkshire and later charged with conspiracy to steal vehicles.

The pair both denied charges of conspiracy to steal 26 vehicles however, at the conclusion of a seven-day trial at Peterborough Crown Court on January 26, both men were found guilty.

Baltors was also convicted of breaching a deportation order after he returned to the UK under a different name just eight days after being deported by Kent Police in February last year.

The deportation order came as a result of him being convicted of perjury, theft offences and possession of an offensive weapon in 2019.

On January 27, they were each jailed for four and a half years.

Baltors was sentenced to an additional three months for breaching the deportation order and disqualified from driving for three years, starting from his release from prison, for driving while uninsured.