It was exactly this kind of experience that Volkswagen encountered (and perhaps still continues to encounter). Between 2016 and 2018, 70 cars were stolen from the parking lot of the manufacturer's plant in Wolfsburg, reports revijahak.hr. The total value of these cars amounted to three million euros.
As it turned out later, stealing a new Volkswagen that had been on the assembly line just a few hours earlier was quite simple. For example, there is a case where a court in Wolfsburg sentenced a 32-year-old driver from Bulgaria to two years and eight months in prison for stealing seven Volkswagens. In 2018, he drove onto the plant's territory, loaded three VW Golf and five Tiguan onto his truck, and then calmly left the production area. The quirk was that truck drivers load new cars themselves; the Bulgarian was familiar with the entry and exit procedure for the new car parking lot, and at the exit he showed the security guards an old waybill (with the wrong number of cars), which no one seriously checked.
Nevertheless, the Germans eventually tracked down the thief. Namely, a few days after the theft, seven Volkswagens were registered in the Bulgarian city of Pernik, which raised suspicions with the police (the thief kept one car for himself). Law enforcement contacted the Volkswagen plant, which checked its "inventory" and identified a shortage of cars. The identity of the thief himself was established using surveillance cameras.
