Cars, Cops and Criminals - Big Business

Series revealing the methods of 21st Century car criminals, players in a sophisticated business stretching across continents and costing the country tens of millions of pounds. With exclusive access to specialist police squads across the country, we see how officers are using increasingly sophisticated methods to catch the criminals, as well as hearing from people who've suffered vehicle theft and number plate cloning. Every year, up to 20,000 luxury cars are stolen from Britain's streets and illegally exported by criminal gangs in a multi-million pound business. Teams from the Metropolitan Polices Stolen Vehicle Unit head to Cyprus, one of the biggest destinations for these vehicles, to track down stolen cars and teach the Cypriot police how to identify which cars have been illegally exported. Cyprus has an astonishing one million registered vehicles for a population of 850,000, and it's an attractive market for UK car criminals as the Cypriots drive on the same side of the road. DCs Simon Ashton and Mike Pilbeam have their work cut out, but with encouraging success - since they arrived they've identified nearly a million pounds' worth of suspect cars, including a £100,000 Bentley GT. The programme also reveals the lengths British criminals go to when they want to steal a car to order, especially as the latest technology makes theft much more difficult. New mum Lucy Edie became a victim, even though her 4x4 was fitted with the latest immobiliser and alarm, when the thieves who targeted her car drove alongside her and held a gun to her head. We also follow Barry, a repatriation agent, who returns stolen cars for the insurance companies.