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Raleigh, NC – Mary Brooks Rice and two friends were hoping to enjoy a nice day at the sunflower patch in Dorothea Dix Park. They did not expect their money, debit cards and credit cards to be stolen from the locked vehicle.
“We parked in a gravel parking lot. There were a lot of people there,” Rice said.
Before heading out to enjoy the sunflowers last Friday, Rice and her friends locked their bags in her friend’s 2019 Honda Pilot. When they got back to their car, it was still locked. They didn’t realize seven credit and debit cards and about $280 in cash had been stolen until they got to lunch.
“All three of us started getting calls about fraudulent charges on our credit cards,” she said.
Rice said between the three, the thieves racked up more than $5,000 in charges, mostly at Target and Best Buy. The thieves did not steal valuables such as laptops, suitcases and bags that were locked in her car.
Rice and her friends weren’t the only ones targeted by the mysterious assailants that day. Two other similar thefts occurred around the same time.
Raleigh police believe this may be a “relay attack,” or keyless car theft, where criminals use technology to intercept the frequency of someone’s key fob to unlock their car.
According to car information site Leasing.com, the attack is carried out by two people working together.
One person stands next to the vehicle, and the other stands next to a device that can pick up the key fob signal. Some of the devices used in the attack could pick up the signal more than 300 feet away.
Some hacking tools are available for sale on Amazon and eBay.
Raleigh Police Lt. Jason Borneo said he couldn’t confirm that happened here, but it likely did.
“We know that this technology is being used because of these incidents,” he said.
All three burglaries took place between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on July 15.
Six debit cards were stolen in the other two burglaries.
“It’s disappointing to think that someone could use it at any time, but certainly in the middle of the day on a sunny Friday, they were very soft,” Rice said. They were very subtle in their entry and exit.”
Raleigh police say this theft tactic is “relatively new,” but security experts have been warning about the phenomenon for some time. A team of Chinese researchers pulled off a relay attack for just $22 to show just how easy it is, Wired reports.
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