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Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

There's a huge difference between the US and EU in this regard. If I steal a car in California and try to sell it in Nevada, I can expect to be arrested.

If I have a car stolen in The Netherlands and it's being sold in Romania, and I find out who's selling it and where, I'll be told that I have to travel to Romania and file report with the local police there before they'll do anything.

The only inter-state enforcement we have in the EU is Interpol, which doesn't care about anything like that, they only handle the likes of violent crime.

So it's kind of like expecting to recover your stolen car from Mexico or Belize, except crossing the border is a lot easier.

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Actually you would just have to file a theft report with the local police and the car would not even enter Romania without the driver likely arrested and the car confiscated, as there is a real time db of cars reported stolen that is shared among the EU members and more. I imagine it could take a bit more effort to actually get the car back. You would probably have to worry much more about the car being torn apart and sold for pieces or leaving Europe through Rotterdam.

Romania is not in Schengen area so they shouldn't get there, the farthest they would get to in that direction is Hungary, at least in theory.

Anyway a few year ago my car was stolen in Slovakia (the insurance paid out so my loss was minimal) and was found after a year in Hungary - the thieves were trying to sell it but it was found out they tried to change the VIN. Because apparently you can't register a car with a stolen VIN in EU. And that's nothing to do with Interpol as far as I know.

> Romania is not in Schengen area so they shouldn't get there

Why is that? Plenty of stolen European cars roaming in Algeria and Tunisia. And with the help of corrupt officers they are registered here.

As I said, in theory, it should be very hard to get out of Schengen with a stolen car. But of course corrupt officials can help. Registering a car with a stolen VIN should not be possible within the EU. Of course "should not".

Interesting because stolen cars are sometimes broken for parts, but perhaps there's no profit in that in US? There was an 'OEM+' car modding craze here a few years back where certain top-end Audis were being targeted solely for their front seats, which would then be fitted to older VWs.

And back when the S2000 was new, people were stealing them for the seats, and so on. But overall it seems like auto thefts have dropped precipitously since the 90s. Likely a combination of coordinated efforts and computerized DBs across states, cars getting harder to steal, etc, making it less worthwhile. Whereas, if parent is correct and it's easier to "get away with" in Europe, the remaining hurdle is technical, and quite an interesting problem to work around, even to this non-thief :)

Parts-related theft is here, but it targets a fairly different set of cars - generally somewhat older (so needing replacement parts) highly common cars. See: https://www.statista.com/chart/6551/the-10-most-stolen-cars-...

I suppose these make for less interesting news stories since they aren't nearly as tricky to steal.

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