Police in the Detroit area arrested seven people this month they say were involved in stealing 16 new Bronco Raptors from Ford Motor Co. factory lots.
The suspects are all ages 19 to 21, according to CBS Detroit. Police recovered 10 of the stolen Raptors; they were located as far away as Alaska, Arizona and Texas.
The SUVs were valued at $1.8 million. Thieves have made off with $6 million worth of new vehicles — mostly F-150s and high-performance Raptor trucks — from plants and holding lots in southeastern Michigan this year, the Detroit Free Press reported.
At least 37 vehicles have gone missing since the beginning of July alone. Ten of those were taken on a single night.
In some cases, trucks were apparently left unlocked with the keys inside, and the thieves were able to resell them to dealerships by using stolen government forms to get clean titles.
Ford isn’t the only automaker to have factories targeted in recent years. Some of the incidents have involved dramatic getaway attempts. Police got into a high-speed chase with a group that stole at least five Chevrolet Camaros from a General Motors plant in Lansing, Mich., and a rash of thefts from Stellantis plants culminated with a Ram pickup crashing into a semi while fleeing security patrols.
