NARITA, Chiba Prefecture--Staff at a paid parking lot near Narita Airport took on the role of sleuths after nine luxury cars were stolen on their watch and recovered all the vehicles through solid detective work.

The team at Super Parking waged a relentless search for the cars stolen overnight by combing through more than 500 coin-operated parking lots in three prefectures close to Tokyo.

Police, noting a spate of auto thefts from privately operated parking lots near the international airport, urged drivers to be extra vigilant during the summer vacation season when cars are often parked for extended periods.

Super Parking is conveniently located three minutes on foot from Narita Airport’s Terminal 3.

The first of the thefts, which occurred around 30 minutes after midnight on June 26, was captured by several security cameras.

The footage recorded three individuals climbing over a fence and breaking into the premises about 10 minutes after manager Kyosuke Chikai closed up after finishing his shift.

One of the gang members, a man, broke a window to gain access to the office and cut the wires to a security camera.

Armed with a key taken from the office, they got into a car and drove off.

The gang returned to the parking lot two hours later and then again 30 minutes after that to steal more cars.

Once dawn had broken, the manager and other staff members noticed that nine vehicles, including a Lexus RX SUV and a Mercedes-Benz, were gone.

Staggered by the brazen nature of the thefts, their first task was to apologize to the owners of the stolen cars. They resolved to find the missing vehicles after learning that signals from GPS trackers installed on three of the cars were detected in Noda, which is also in Chiba Prefecture.

Staff members wasted no time in rushing to the source of each signal and found the cars parked in three different coin-operated parking lots.

Chikai, 39, was determined to make amends, so he and his staff decided to take matters into their own hands to locate the remaining six cars.

A Chiba prefectural police investigator gave them a useful tip: stolen cars can usually be found in coin-operated parking lots near train stations.

Because the third theft was carried out only half an hour after the second one, the intrepid group initially focused on spots along railway lines located within a round trip of 30 minutes.

The next day, June 27, Chikai caught sight of a familiar-looking car in a metered parking lot near JR Narita Station.

To his surprise, it was a BMW stolen from his facility.

Chikai and his staff focused their search in the area surrounding the station and found a Mercedes-Benz and a Toyota Voxy.

Footage from a dashboard camera installed in one of the cars found in Noda showed that the vehicle had previously been parked in Toride, Ibaraki Prefecture.

Chikai and his team, figuring the thieves drove the cars from one place to another after they stole the vehicles, widened the scope of their search to include northern Chiba Prefecture, southern Ibaraki Prefecture and Saitama Prefecture.

At a little past 1 a.m. on June 29, they found two Lexus RXs and a Toyota Harrier SUV in a coin-operated parking lot in Moriya, Ibaraki Prefecture, which meant they had now recovered all the nine stolen vehicles.

“They could have been moved again if we had gotten there a little later,” Chikai said.

Footage from the dashboard camera of one of the stolen vehicles contained audio of a conversation in Vietnamese, in which the perpetrators were talking about how much the cars would fetch after being sold through an app.

As a result of the thefts, Super Parking is now considering a range of steps to prevent a recurrence. That includes signing a contract with a security firm and obtaining permission from customers to install a GPS tracker on their cars.

“It is difficult to maintain a balance (between fees and additional expenses for the steps), but we have no choice but to do so to prevent a recurrence,” Chikai said.

80% OF STOLEN CARS LOCKED

At Super Parking, staff keep the keys of the parked cars in the office.

In 2023, the number of auto thefts in Japan increased for a second straight year since 2021, standing at 5,762, according to the National Police Agency and Chiba prefectural police.

As of the end of May this year, there had been 2,515 cases.

Chiba Prefecture had the worst record for auto thefts in the country with 746 in 2023.

This year, 334 cases, an increase of 56 from the previous year, had been reported by the end of May.

Thieves focused on cars at monthly parking lots and parking spaces at homes. However, several vehicles were also stolen from another privately operated parking lot near Narita Airport on June 10.

About 80 percent of vehicles were locked when they were stolen.

Thieves use the “CAN Invader” device, which forcefully unlocks doors and starts the engine, “relay attacks,” which intercept radio waves emitted by smart keys, and other means to steal cars.

Although security cameras and GPS devices provide leads to investigators, the latter are often destroyed by perpetrators when they are carrying out their crimes.

“It is effective to use devices whose location can be monitored after they are stolen, as well as add-on GPS gizmos,” a senior investigator said.