1:24 pm, May 2, 2025
Supercar dealership director Tom Jaconelli had his new Range Rover Sport stolen this week, but it was back at his possession in under 30 minutes.
Having a car stolen wasn’t an unusual occurrence for Jaconelli – who been a victim of car theft four times – but it was unusual for police to catch the thief on the same night.
When criminals accessed his car on Wednesday night (April 30) it was the third time Jaconelli had a Range Rover Sport stolen too, but by having a tracker fitted police were able to track it down and the perpetrator.
The SUV was the newer model, which Tom had been told it was much harder to steal, but they’d only had this car a month before thieves managed to steal it.
He told Car Dealer Magazine that the theft happened at around 10pm just as they were going to bed and he had a call from the tracker company.
‘It’s never good when you get a call from the tracker company. I looked out the window and could see the car was gone, and then checked our doorbell camera and saw it happened about four minutes before we got the call,’ he said.
‘I called the police and they said they were going to send some officers out to see if they could track it down.
View this post on Instagram
‘It was only about half an hour later I hear from the Metropolitan Police that they’ve managed to track down the car. Then they call back again to say they’ve caught the suspect as well.’
The supercar dealer explained that the car was fitted with a system that meant if they attempted to restart the car but it was too far away from the tracker key fob then it wouldn’t turn on, and they believe this is what caught the criminals out.
He said: ‘They’ve managed to scan the key fob in our house or whatever they do with the technology to kind of make it seem like the key is in the car so they can start it.
‘But what the system does, is as soon as that tracker fob is not in range, they cannot physically start the car.
‘I think what they’ve done is they’ve turned the car off, thinking, I will start up again in a minute and realised that they can’t.
‘So the police turn up and they they’ve taken three dog vans as well, because they’re like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna get this guy’, and they get there, and there’s a bloke that’s standing around the car.
‘The dogs chased him down and one managed to catch him. I then just got an Uber up there and brought the car home.’
Fortunately, the car didn’t have any major damage but they had unsuccessfully tried to locate the tracker in the car interior to remove it.
