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Tijuana, Mexico — After a month away, Catherine Vermillion got here dwelling to her San Diego condo and an empty parking house.
“I regarded up and realized my automotive was gone,” Vermillion instructed CBS Information. “I remembered that I had an AirTag within the automotive, so I checked my cellphone, and the AirTag confirmed that my automotive was in Tijuana, Mexico.”
When she noticed the place the AirTag popped up, she mentioned she was in “shock and disbelief.”
Disbelief became frustration after she mentioned native police could not assist.
“They only mentioned that as a result of it is throughout the border, they are not capable of go and get it regardless that I might present them it was solely 45 minutes away,” Vermillion mentioned.
It is a frustration shared by the California Freeway Patrol.
“In the case of nation borders, we can not cross that line,” CHP Lt. David Navarro mentioned.
Navarro warned that organized theft rings are going after high-end SUVs, pickups and efficiency vehicles, stealing them within the U.S., then smuggling them into Mexico. He mentioned it is profitable, laborious to trace and sometimes not possible to recuperate these vehicles 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 course of the evening, and the sufferer doesn’t get up until 7 within the morning, effectively if it is stolen at 2, you may have roughly 5 hours to move that car,” Navarro mentioned. “If that car’s not reported within the system, and it passes by means of that digicam, then no, it isn’t 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 mentioned numerous stolen vehicles find yourself subsequent to the airport in Tijuana, a couple of hundred yards from the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It is a organized drop-off level,” Mohr mentioned.
Organized in lots of instances by cartels, who federal brokers instructed CBS Information drive the vehicles into Mexico and use them to visitors medication and weapons.
Mohr labored with native legislation enforcement in Mexico to repossess Vermillion’s automotive and produce it again to San Diego.
“It looks like a win,” Mohr mentioned. “It feels such as you made it proper, that you simply righted a flawed on this planet.”
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 mentioned. “It was like one of the best day ever.”
For Vermillion, it was one of the best day ever, however for many, that day by no means comes.
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