The Untold Story Of America's Greatest Car Thief

Min jinyang a Chinese intelligence officer moved to New York where he established the largest car theft gang in American history they specialize in luxurious car theft usually if the police can't get a stolen car they can at least get a piece of it but Yang and his gang stole thousands of cars without the police getting any trace the car vanished and nothing was left behind so where did the cars go what brought you gang from China to America why did a Chinese intelligence officer steal cars in New York keep watching to get the answers New

York City is still one of the biggest cities in the world according to some studies it is considered the most luxurious city on earth it has the largest number of wealthy people who normally possess luxurious and expensive cars New York City has America's largest concentration of high-end cars in 19 1999 a massive wave of car thefts hit New York imagine that 48 high-end Vehicles were stolen in less than a month and a half and the cars disappeared in a matter of seconds the thefts were quick and quiet the thief opened the car calmly turned it

on and took it the gang did not have a specific targeted area in the city they used to steal cars from malls parking lots and everywhere the strange thing is that all these cars do not appear again generally the stolen cars are found without their expensive Parts because the thief resol them but the cars that the gang was stealing were disappearing and the police did not have any trace of them so what were these thieves doing with the cars after they were stolen where do they take it these questions confused the police and prompted them

to believe that the cars were being exported the only place that was suitable for exporting a large number of cars like these was Brooklyn's port in New York a team from the New York police and especially from the car theft investigation department went to Brooklyn's Port where they conducted an investigation but they did not notice any suspicious activity related to a car theft gang at that moment they felt that they were dealing with a large entity maybe a gang belongs to the organized crime world but in fact the person responsible for all these operations was

not even an American this person was called M jinyang who was a Chinese man and the biggest surprise was that he was a Former Intelligence officer in the Chinese Army and the only person responsible for the theft of thousands of luxury cars from New York which he made himself up to $40 million which is worth up to $75 million today the question is how did he do it to know the answer let us first know who Min jinyang is is min jinyang was an intelligence officer in the Chinese Army from which he was discharged in

1990 then he moved to Shanghai a wealthy City where there was a high demand for luxurious cars but such cars were not available for sale in China so here Yang saw an opportunity he could take advantage of so he went and contacted the gangs in shangi and he offered the leader of one of these gangs a business deal Yang told the gang leader that he used to work as an intelligence officer in the Army and he has experience in smuggling how it works and how it is fought by the security forces so he managed to

convince him that he could bring him cars from outside and the Gang leader could sell them in China through his Network the leader of the gang liked the idea because he knew that cars in China are expensive he could get a car from outside that is worth $100,000 and sell it in China for $200,000 so it's a profitable business Yang agreed with the leader to a 40 to 60 profit split deal and the Gang leader gave Yang half a million dollars to set up his gang and start implementing his operations in the city where the

cars are New York M Jin Yang knew that New York would be the best Target where he could get all types of cars he wanted the number of luxurious cars in the city is huge because of the number of rich people there Yang took the half million dollars that his partner gave him and traveled to New York to start executing his plan since the beginning Yang has started using his military experience that he learned in his former occupation he entered America using a fake identity and adopted the name Kenny he pretended to be a struggling

immigrant Yang's first goal was to integrate into American society he wanted to make people feel that he was a normal person he used to drive an old Nissan Altima he did not want to appear as a wealthy person who had money from the beginning Yang brought with him a man to assist him and to be his right hand his name was poy Chow so the first task that Yang and chia had to do was to secure a warehouse where they could keep the stolen cars until they got shipped to China but the warehouse must meet

certain conditions first it has to be away from any police station second it must be in a quiet area where there are not many problems or crimes meaning an area where police and security forces do not gather an unsuspicious clean area which is difficult to find in New York because it is a city known for its high crime rates after weeks of research Yang and chia found the appropriate warehouse now they want to rent this warehouse for which they created an anonymous company the reason for creating an anonymous company was that if an investigation was

conducted on the company it wouldn't come back to yang he tried to separate himself so that if things got worse he would be protected to start executing the plan Yang needed a crew he recruited trusted Chinese people to work with him and he surrounded himself with only Chinese people because they were the only ones that he could trust and he was sure of their loyalty so the first thing they did in the warehouse was to make it look like food storage they brought food boxes and put them on the front so that if anyone took

a look at the warehouse he would immediately think that the warehouse belonged to a food company most of the food they brought was dry and packed so they could keep it in the refrigerator for a long time then they installed surveillance cameras around the warehouse and kept every corner of the street under their surveillance after getting the first task done Yang and his gang are now ready for the next step which is stealing the cars by the way Yang had no previous experience in car theft and and he did not want to get his hands

dirty so the idea was to look for someone who had experience in the field and make him work for him so he started going to the car garages and the car auctions where he met many people after a while of searching he got the person he was looking for this person was called Dean he was an expert thief of cars Yang got to know Dean at an auction for salvage vehicles Yang told Dean that he wanted to work for him and run the theft operations meaning Dean would be responsible for the theft either he could

steal cars by himself or he could hire someone and work together due to his experience in the field Dean knows many other thieves who can work with him the deal was that Yang would deal with Dean and Dean would deal with the thieves Yang wanted to separate himself from the thefts as much as he could he wanted to keep himself unknown and run the thefts through Dean Dean had a friend in this profession whose name was Mario Lopez he trusted him a lot he was even better than him in car theft so the first thing

Dean thought about when Yang offered him the deal was Mario Dean went to Mario and told him that he was dealing with a person who was ready to buy any car they stole and that he could handle it such an offer is really tempting for all car thieves because the hardest thing is how to get rid of the car after being stolen and if they already found the buyer before stealing the operation would be much easier therefore Dean expressed his Readiness to carry out the operations and Mario also did not steal the cars by himself

he goes to the targeted car opens it bypasses its security system and prepares it for the theft then they get another person to steal it who can take the car to a hidden place so now we have a series of people on top of which Yang who deals with Dean and Dean deal with Mario who prepares the cars for thefts and then asks a group of Thieves whose work it is to take the car somewhere else after the car is stolen Yang manages the warehouse where all the stolen cars get prepared for being shipped all

the warehouse staff are Chinese or at least Asian people that Yang trusts completely this way Yang keeps himself clean protected and separated from the theft operations this organization leaves him unknown to all but his closest assistant when all the pieces were in place it was time to move Yang gave Dean the order to start the theft operations and told him to Target a particular type of car he asked him to only steal the luxurious Vehicles Dean passed along the orders to Mario who started to run his thieves Network they will Target the places where the

rich people are usually located such as the luxurious malls the residential streets with luxurious houses and even sometimes the parking lots the whole theft process itself depends on Mario's abilities and skills The Man Has Talent he can steal any car whenever and wherever he wants once the targeted car is identified Mario gets close to the door breaks the glass and goes in through the window instead of breaking the lock because if the car lock is broken the car's computer will turn off and then the car won't be able to start one of io's most important

skills was using a computer to bypass the car's security systems he connected the laptop to the car's computer and reprogrammed it allowing it to start the vehicle with a normal key Mario was so good at doing this that he could do it in less than 1 minute once the car security systems are disabled he asks one of his men to go and take the car to a safe place they used to take the car to a good neighborhood parking lot where there were plenty of luxurious cars cars so that the stolen car wouldn't attract attention

why did they do this because such expensive cars are usually equipped with a GPS device and since Yang takes every detail into consideration he instructed the thieves to take the cars to those safe places electronically scan them take out the GPS device and throw it away let's assume that the device has already been activated maybe the car owner discovered that his car was stolen activated the device and then informed the police in this case the thief Parks the stolen car in those parking lots among the luxurious cars and leaves it there for 2 days if

the car stays in its place for 2 days it means that the police are not looking for it and don't know where it is at that time the thief goes back and takes the car and he's sure that he is not being followed by anyone all of this was Yang's instructions this guy was very very clever apparently his experience as an intelligence officer was valuable and this is what will be proven in the story Yang used to order Dean to tell this group of Thieves to bring the car and park at a few blocks away

from the warehouse he didn't want anyone to know where the house was located no one knew about the warehouse but Dean and his friend Mario who were responsible for managing the thieves after the thief leaves the car at a distance from the warehouse Dean goes and takes the car to the warehouse but Yang still has one last test to make sure that the police are not following the vehicles he ordered Dean to drive around the warehouse so if any car is driving in the same Circle he is driving around it means that they're following in

and the surveillance operation was done in two ways the first way is through the surveillance cameras that are installed outside the warehouse they use them to monitor the street to see if there's a car that is following Dean the second way was through a second car that circles a wider area on the alert in case the police show up after Yang feels that the situation is safe and there's no danger he gives his orders to bring the vehicle to the warehouse Yang took all these precautions and protection measures to make sure that everything was going

just as planned once the card is in the warehouse the Chinese team is in charge the Chinese team's task is to prepare the vehicle for shipping Yang wants it to reach China in its best condition as if it's just coming out of the showroom the Chinese team examines the vehicle and fixes what needs to be fixed they repair the locks make new keys and reprogram the car computer when the Chinese finish working on the vehicle and make it look brand new it is time to get the car shipped to China they load the vehicles on

containers that they brought then they gauge the container weight and make fake manifests for the shipment that show that what is inside the container is food and the weight of the food on the fake manifest matches the weight of the cars their work was meticulous so as not to seem suspicious after the container leaves the warehouse do you think that it goes directly to the port of course not because Yang knew that the police would consider searching the ports and the containers and watching them especially after the stealing operations increased so he instructed his team

to ship the cars from the farthest Port first they used to transport the container to New Jersey which is a state near New York where the container is put on the train that goes all over the country until it reaches California which is on the other side of the country the farthest point from New York Yang didn't do all of this just to avoid the police California's ports were closer to China because it's on the west side of America so he killed two birds with one stone in a California port the container is loaded on

a ship as a normal food container but still there's an additional layer of protection the ship that carries the container is not going to China it's going in another Direction but on the way they meet another ship and secretly load the container on the second ship which heads to China and the owners of the second ship know the real content of the container they even have a detailed manifest of the cars this way Yang kept running his gang for years in 5 years Yang and his gang managed to steal thousands of cars from New York

and the police were puzzled they couldn't catch them or find evidence that could lead them to Yang's gang despite the huge number of stolen cars and the millions Yang made out of the theft operations the demand for these vehicles in China didn't stop on the contrary it was increasing which was outstripping Yang's ability to steal more vehicles in order to boost Ed the car export rate they began targeting car dealerships where they had the opportunity to steal several cars at once Yang ordered Dean and his friend Mario to Target the car dealerships Mario went to

one of these car dealerships posing as a customer who was coming for a car test drive while talking to the salesman he noticed the place where he keeps the car keys a box fixed on the wall inside the manager's office then he thanked the salesman and left a few nights later Mario returned late at night after the dealership had closed he broke in and went straight to the manager's office specifically to the box of the car keys he took the car keys that were there which were all luxurious cars while his friends were outside waiting

for his signal Mario gave his crew the signal and seven of them came in he gave them the car keys and each one took a car and went in a different direction from the other the whole operation took only 3 minutes by the time the alarm was turned on and an electronic message was sent to the police Mario and his friends were gone with the cars but one of the seven stolen cars got into an accident which caused a big problem when the police came to the accident scene they discovered that the car was stolen

so they arrested the thief who was driving the car and took him for investigation with a bit of pressure he turned on his fellow thieves and began to cooperate at with the police and told them everything he knew he told them about Mario and Dean the police appointed a tracking team made up of some investigators and made them track down Dean because they learned from the arrested driver that he was the one who was in charge of the theft operation they kept tracking down Dean for a while and eventually he led them to Yang's Warehouse

they parked their cars at a distance from the warehouse and began monitoring it to see what was going on inside the warehouse what the investigators didn't know was that Yang's friend Chia was doing counter surveillance of the entire area around the warehouse he immediately noticed the car of the investigators who were monitoring their warehouse when Yang knew about the matter he didn't get nervous on the contrary he was quiet and prepared for something like this Yang designed his work in the warehouse in such a way that it could disappear in a moment the investigators of

course would not break in except Ste after monitoring the area and Gathering as much evidence as possible during this period Yang didn't bring any new cars into the warehouse but he still had some cars inside besides the equipment and tools used to fix the cars so he had to move all these cars and tools out of the warehouse but they were under surveillance don't worry Yang can handle it as usual he brought a few trucks into the warehouse where he loaded all his cars and Equipment camouflaging the police that he was transporting food because apparently

they were in a food warehouse this way he took out all the cars and tools that were in the warehouse in front of the police who were waiting for evidence they didn't know that the evidence was being transported in front of them because they weren't aware that Yang and his gang knew about them Yang took out all the important things that were related to his work and when the police came the next day for surveillance they noticed that no one had entered or left the warehouse they were surprised and at that moment they decided to

make a move they broke in and searched the place but they found nothing and they knew that the gang had defeated them during the surveillance period Yang never showed up in front of them so they didn't know who he was or what he looked like they decided to go back to the person they knew Dean at first they thought about arresting him but later when they thought about it they decided to track him again so they kept monitoring him for a while hoping that they would catch the whole gang or at least catch most of

it they also wanted to know where the cars were because they were still confused and couldn't get any trace of them during their surveillance of Dean they took permission from the court so that they could EES drop on his calls and they heard the same questions in many of his calls are the agents still monitoring did they stop the surveillance when will they come back and Dean always answered that he didn't know the investigators assumed that the people asking these questions were partners of Dean in the operation the people who were in The Warehouse after

6 months of surveillance finally an important person contacted Dean this guy was Kenny we know that Yang's surname is Kenny so Kenny told Dean I'm back and told him that he had an order for 260 but he didn't mention exactly what the two 260 was Kenny's words were cryptic as if he knew that they were being monitored so the investigators had doubts that this was the leader of the gang Kenny and that he wanted to resume the theft operations again what the investigators didn't know was that Yang was really afraid that their phones would be

monitored that's why he was using cryptic language in his phone calls and he decided to use phones for a while and then get rid of them so the police couldn't track the number or his location he also ordered everyone in his gang to keep changing their phones which made the tracking process more difficult for the investigators because in order to EES drop on any phone number they need Court approval so each time one of these people changes his phone they need a new approval but how could the investigators know their new numbers after they changed

them the secret was that they were still Eaves dropping on their families for example Dean used to call his wife so when he changed his phone they could discover his new number through his wife's phone calls after the investigator had discovered Dean's new number they got court approval to EES drop on him and then through his phone calls with his Partners the investigators could identify the other numbers the process was very tiring but it was worth it they were hoping that they would accomplish big achievements at that moment the investigators were one step ahead of

Yang for the first time since the beginning of the story and what made things even worse for him was that his assistants weren't as cautious as he was for example Chia his Chinese partner wasn't very cautious sometimes he would even talk on the phone about where they would go for dinner so it was very easy to track them down the investigators benefited from this information and they sent a Chinese undercover officer to the restaurant where chiao and yang used to go for the first first time they were able to finally get a closer look at

the Mastermind who had been confusing them for the past few years the undercover Chinese officer who was planted in the restaurant was able to hear their conversations while they were talking about a new Warehouse that they were planning to rent and he managed to know where the warehouse was the investigators immediately moved to monitor this warehouse but this time the surveillance would be different they didn't want any police cars to be present in the area they didn't want any police presence what they did was Mount surveillance cameras on the buildings surrounding the warehouse cameras that

would keep their eyes on every corner of the place and they even managed to place a GPS device on one of the containers that were going to the warehouse this way they would know exactly where these cars were going for the first time the situation changed and the police took over the game Yang had no idea what was going on around him so he kept doing his usual work bringing new cars to the warehouse and he even invented new ways to steal more one of the smartest ways was stealing cars from parking garages where the

car owners leave their keys with the guard so he can move a car if another car wants to come out Mario Lopez Dean's friend made a deal with one of the guards of these garages he told him that they would give him $500 for each car he allowed them to steal the amount of money was seductive for the guard because of his low salary therefore he accepted the deal now they could steal a lot of cars in the garage at once so they arranged a meeting with the guard came and took the keys from him

tied him up and left him inside the garage of course they did this so that no one would suspect that the guard was cooperating with them and then they drove away a number of cars that were all luxurious after a while a person came to the the garage and saw the guard tied up and lying down on the ground so he called the police by the time the police arrived at the garage the cars were already in the warehouse but wait a minute didn't we say that the thieves after stealing the cars wake for 2

days to make sure that no one is following the car unfortunately in dangerous jobs the person begins to get used to and lose his awareness over time and apparently this is what happened to Yang and his gang so they brought all the cars that they stole from the garage immediately to the warehouse without assuming that one of these cars might have been equipped with a GPS tracking device the local police were informed by one of the car's owners so they began tracking it until one of the police officers arrived at the warehouse with his car

the officer was from the local police he did not know about the investigation that had been going on he did not know that there were investigators monitoring this gang at that moment so he went to the warehouse and wanted to enter the warehouse normally he just wanted to know what was going on in this place from where the GPS signals came he did not expect that in this place the biggest car theft gang in all of America was operating the investigators on the other side were monitoring the area through the surveillance cameras and once they

saw the police officer they knew that their operation was going to be ruined and there was nothing they could do to stop him before he arrived at the warehouse when the police officer was about to enter the warehouse the workers who were inside suddenly came out running surely they saw him from their survillance cameras when the investigators saw the workers running away they realized that they had to act fast this was the appropriate time to intervene and arrest the gang there was no second chance they arrested the workers who were inside the warehouse but Yang

whom they knew by the name of Kenny was not there and they knew that if he got the news he would run away again fortunately they were mobilizing the surveillance unit in front of his house through their surveillance for the last period of time they were able to identify the location of his house so the police forces were monitoring him from a distance all the time and when the warehouse workers were arrested the police forces who were monitoring Kenny received orders to move and arrest him immediately Kenny was arrested Ed that night when he was

leaving his house and after being questioned they knew his real identity his real name is not Kenny but M jinyang and knew his past in Military Intelligence in the Chinese Army at that moment they understood why this man had confused them all these years but unfortunately they were unable to determine where the cars were going because the raiding process took place before the time they were planning to raid they didn't have a chance to know where these cars were going or where they were sold exactly eventually Yang pleads guilty to Enterprise corruption it seems that

they couldn't charge him for stealing cars because he wasn't stealing them on his own Yang was sentenced to only 10 years even though during the past 10 years he was able to steal thousands of cars and they estimated that his profits would reach more than $40 million which is worth $75 million today imagine that they did even get a dollar from this money because he didn't keep it in America he kept it in China in the end Yang won the battle with the police and it turned out that he was smarter than them despite the

mistake he made in the end which helped the police bring him down we have reached the end of our story don't forget to like the video and subscribe to the channel I hope you enjoyed it thank you for watching see you in the next video