Jeanine Pirro walked up to a Justice Department podium and told America something car owners needed to hear.
Criminals are more sophisticated than ever.
And what she found out about your car should keep you up tonight.
How Thieves Steal Your Car Without a Key Using a $500 Device
There's a small electronic tool you can buy online for around $500.
Auto technicians use it every day to reprogram vehicles after repairs.
And for the better part of a year, a criminal ring was using it in the dead of night to steal cars across Washington, Maryland, and Pennsylvania without breaking a single window.
The device is called an Autel.
"No smashed windows, no drama," Pirro said at the press conference. "Just a sleek electronic device called an Autel. And in under a minute, the car's brain is rewritten. The car is gone in 60 seconds."
Interim DC Police Chief Jeffery Carroll put the scope into stark perspective.
So far, he said, investigators have connected the defendants to 117 vehicle thefts in 2025 alone – accounting for 20% of all motor vehicle thefts in the District that year.
Twenty percent.
One ring.
One device anyone can order online and have delivered to their door.
The targets ranged from Corvettes and Camaros down to Honda Civics and Acura RDXs – Pirro said Hondas carry extra value on the black market because their parts are interchangeable across multiple models.
Once a car was stolen, GPS and Bluetooth tracking were disabled immediately.
Then the vehicles moved to what prosecutors called "cool-off zones" – a parking garage at 70 I Street SE in DC's Navy Yard and a Marriott hotel in Maryland – where plates were swapped and VINs were obscured.
How a Stolen Car Gets Shipped Overseas and Nobody Notices
From the cool-off zones, the cars went to ports.
Three of them – Savannah, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; and Newark, New Jersey.
There they were loaded into sealed shipping containers, labeled "Furniture," and sent across the ocean.
"In sealed containers, they're shipped across the ocean to Africa, where demand is sky high and profits are enormous," Pirro said.
The destination, confirmed in the federal indictment: Ghana.
Federal prosecutors also executed a search warrant at a vehicle storage facility in Decatur, Georgia – believed to be another node in the same network.
The 15-count federal indictment names five defendants: Jacob Hernandez, 29, of Los Angeles; Dustin Wetzel, 23, of Woodbridge, Virginia; James Young, 23, of Hyattsville, Maryland; Khobe David, 24, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland; and Chance Clark, 25, of Waldorf, Maryland.
A sixth defendant remains a fugitive – his indictment sealed pending capture.
This wasn't a new criminal innovation when it hit DC.
Milwaukee prosecutors exposed a nearly identical OBD-port key-programming theft ring in 2025, with suspects driving away in Hondas, Toyotas, and Nissans while victims had no idea what happened.
How to Protect Your Car From Key Fob Theft Starting Tonight
The Autel device these thieves used to steal 117 cars in a single year is commercially available to anyone.
You do not need a license to own one. You do not need to register it anywhere. You can order it right now and have it by Thursday.
Pirro made clear she wants that to change.
"I don't think there's any question," she said when asked whether the devices need more regulation. "You shouldn't have that unless you have a legitimate reason. If you're in the business of registering cars or licensing cars or repairing cars, that's one thing. But to be able to buy this on your own – I think there definitely has to be some kind of legislation or registering."
Carroll told drivers what they can do right now: keep your key fob in a Faraday bag, which blocks the electronic signal entirely, and put a Club on your steering wheel.
A thief with an Autel can reprogram your key fob – but he cannot easily drive a car with a steel bar locking the steering column.
The technology gap between what criminals are doing and what the law currently restricts is enormous – and Pirro is the first DC prosecutor in years who seems determined to close it.
Trump put a serious prosecutor in the nation's capital, and she's already producing results that the last administration's hands-off approach never did.
Sources:
- Max Bacall, "Jeanine Pirro reveals how high-tech car thieves 'rewrite the brain' of vehicles and ship them overseas," Fox News, April 23, 2026.
- "Car theft ring steals vehicles in under a minute using electronic device: feds," Fox News, April 22, 2026.
- "After stolen cars from DC ended up in Africa, 6 charged in vehicle-theft ring," WTOP News, April 23, 2026.
- "How an international theft ring used tech to steal 100+ cars in DC area," NBC4 Washington, April 22, 2026.
- "Feds charge five in connection to alleged D.C. auto theft ring," The Washington Times, April 23, 2026.
- "High-Tech Car Thieves Used Key Fob Devices to Steal Over 130 Vehicles, Feds Say," Townhall, April 22, 2026.