Tijuana, Mexico — After a month away, Catherine Vermillion got here house to her San Diego house and an empty parking house.
“I appeared up and realized my automotive was gone,” Vermillion advised CBS Information. “I remembered that I had an AirTag within the automotive, so I checked my telephone, and the AirTag confirmed that my automotive was in Tijuana, Mexico.”
When she noticed the place the AirTag popped up, she stated she was in “shock and disbelief.”
Disbelief became frustration after she stated native police could not assist.
“They only stated that as a result of it is throughout the border, they don’t seem to be capable of go and get it regardless that I might present them it was solely 45 minutes away,” Vermillion stated.
It is a frustration shared by the California Freeway Patrol.
“In the case of nation borders, we can’t cross that line,” CHP Lt. David Navarro stated.
Navarro warned that organized theft rings are going after high-end SUVs, pickups and efficiency automobiles, stealing them within the U.S., then smuggling them into Mexico. He stated it is profitable, onerous to trace and infrequently inconceivable to recuperate these automobiles as soon as they cross the border.
In simply the final 4 years, CHP knowledge reveals the variety of stolen automobiles tracked crossing the border from California, Arizona and Texas jumped 79%.
“If a car’s stolen in the midst of the evening, and the sufferer doesn’t get up until 7 within the morning, effectively if it is stolen at 2, you’ve got roughly 5 hours to move that car,” Navarro stated. “If that car’s not reported within the system, and it passes via that digital camera, then no, it is not going to be alerted in any respect.”
That is precisely what occurred to Vermillion’s Jeep. The distinction was she knew precisely the place it ended up — 46 miles away, over the border in Tijuana.
CBS Information 
Enter Phil Mohr, a repo man who has spent the final 20 years as a stolen automotive bounty hunter in Mexico.
Mohr stated lots of stolen automobiles find yourself subsequent to the airport in Tijuana, just a few hundred yards from the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It is a organized drop-off level,” Mohr stated.
Organized in lots of circumstances by cartels, who federal brokers advised CBS Information drive the automobiles into Mexico and use them to site visitors medication and weapons.
Mohr labored with native regulation enforcement in Mexico to repossess Vermillion’s automotive and convey it again to San Diego.
“It seems like a win,” Mohr stated. “It feels such as you made it proper, that you just righted a flawed on the earth.”
A neighbor of Vermillion’s took an image to seize the second when Mohr introduced her automotive again.
“I simply have my arms up, like, whoa,” Vermillion stated. “It was like the very best day ever.”
For Vermillion, it was the very best day ever, however for many, that day by no means comes.
