Transnational vehicle crime: the use of intelligence triangulation to estimate stolen vehicle export volumes

Transnational vehicle crime (TVC) is already established in Australia. Involvement in the global re-distribution of stolen vehicles offers high financial returns at negligible risk, and local intelligence suggests that numerous variations on the general theme have existed for over a decade. However, the best sources of data, information and intelligence used to estimate stolen vehicle export are inherently flawed: border detections are infrequent, the disposal method of unrecovered vehicles is often indeterminate, and learnings from other nations are only partially applicable in the local context. The resulting uncertainty creates an immediate difficulty in prioritising TVC against competing concerns.This article aims to demonstrate a practical approach to the triangulation of operational (qualitative) intelligence with a structured analysis of (quantitative) vehicle theft records to generate a reliable estimation of stolen vehicle exportation from Australia.