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11-141:VT

5th March 1998, Page 50
5th March 1998
Page 50
Page 51
Page 50, 5th March 1998 — 11-141:VT
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

on the trail__ .....

Private investigators don't just work for suspicious spouses.

Operating out of Liverpool and Hull, two ex-coppers are making a living tracing missing trailers. Rob Willock reports.

/n the criminal underworld, the clever thieves are asking: "Why risk stealing a Ferrari, when you can steal a trailer?" Trailers are plentiful and low profile, but worth a fortune. Thanks to industry complacency, their security is often lax, and thanks to legislative dawdling, they aren't listed on a national register like powered vehicles. So they are particularly vulnerable in their first 12 months (before their first annual test). Trailer theft is big business.

Syd Lyon was a policeman for 25 years up to 1984. It was during his time with Kent CID and regional crime squad that he got his first taste of CV crime. "There was a lot of trailer theft. But we'd tend to forget about the trailers and target the loads. Anyway, we knew the trailers would turn up abandoned in Silvertown or some such place."

Meanwhile, his partner-in-crime-detection, Kate Lilley, served with Lincolnshire and I itunberside police, latterly with CID in Hull.

Both subsequently set up separate private investigation businesses, mostly on subcontract work for other Pls. But their work often brought them into contact—and one day took them trailer hunting. One particular asskmment was for a freight forwarder which asked for help in tracing a trailer. It was the classic fraud. The company had used its own good credit record to hire a trailer for a newly established haulier to use, and fronting the payments. The company shouldn't have done it—it's against the rental terms to sub-let trailers—but it happens and people get stung.

The haulier "did a runner" with the trailer to Northern Ireland, leaving the freight forwarder with the monthly rental payments and egg on its face. Lyon had contacts in the Province, found the trailer and spotted the niche.

"We realised there were lots of other stolen trailers in circulation, so we set up Coast to Coast and started recovering more. Now we think we're the only specialists in the land," says Lyon.

Ringing

However, there are several "specialists" in trailer fraud. LiIley says: "We've come across the same people again and again in the past nine years. Sometimes we'll follow one trailer to a huge ringing operation and find it's too big for us to handle alone. So we'll call in the police, but they need evidence before they can get warrants, and we may have to spend a month staking the place out."

Coast to Coast often works without payment assurances because, until the road grime is scraped off the trailers' frames, the trailers' owners aren't known. It could belong to a haulier or, if its loss has already been covered, an insurance company.

"We rely on the goodwill of the owners or insurers paying us a finder's fee," says Lilley. "But sometimes the owner will happily have the trailer back but then say: 'We didn't ask you to find it so we're not paying you.'

"That happened recently when we invoiced Tibbett & Britten for £500. It took its trailer back but refused to pay up. Eagle Star was the same after we recovered two reefers it had paid out on. We've got salvage rights, and we could pursue it through the courts. We don't, but we've considered it when money has been tight."

Apart from its own time and resources, Coast to Coast's costs include paying for mechanics to identify recovered trailers, which will often be resprayed and have their 11) numbers angle-ground off.

The ex-coppers' instincts often prove expensive too. "When you've got an investigative background, it's very hard to turn your back on crime," says Utley. "There are £100,000s involved. Even a straight tilt is worth £20,000, rising to £60,000 for reefers. It goes against all our instincts to leave these trailers just because we're unlikely to get paid."

Salvage

There is some work with payment guarantees. Coast to Coast is regularly engaged by TIP and CTR (now merged into TIP Europe) and a number of smaller companies to do specific salvage work for them. Insurance companies such as Norwich Union and Sun Alliance also employ the pair, but others are more wary. "They think we're carpetbaggers simply out looking for homeless trailers. We're not," says Lyon.

Lyon and Lilley may not be bounty hunters, but some of the individuals they come across are less than honest. "In parts of Greece and Morocco, for example, the constant need to give backhanders makes some jobs not worth pursuing -they start to add up to more than the value of the trailer," says Lyon.

Many of the stolen trailers find their way abroad. The Baltic states, Poland and Morocco are the most interesting places Coast to Coast has visited in the course of its investigations. "We've worked in almost every country in Europe looking for trailers, and ventured into Africa," says Lyon.

Once the trailers are overseas, time is of the essence. "We traced a number of new reefers through Greece and Romania to Poland," recalls Lilley. When we found them they were wedged full of rough timber and not worth bringing back. The tyres were down to the wire, the bodywork dented and the fridges broken.

"But in Lithuania, it's the reverse. They'll take stolen vehicles in any condition and refurbish them with the minimum of resources—they're fantastic engineers."

It's easy to envy the adventure of Coast to Coast's work, but Lyon and Lilley are adamant that it's not all fun. Scarier moments include narrowly avoiding an armed bank robbery in Lithuania, several brushes with organised crime syndicates across Eastern Europe, having their hire car stolen in Poland and flying in an old Russian aircraft barely fit to fly.

But some risks just aren't worth taking. "We know there are loads of stolen British trailers in Algiers, but we won't go—insurance investigators have been shot there," says Lyon.

Less dangerous, but no less harrying for Coast to Coast, is work involving the retrieval of trailers being held after drug busts, where naive British drivers have been caught after being stitched up by the loaders. Again, there's the problem of involvement. We can't show sympathy, or we'll be implicated. We often want to get involved and we feel others could do more for these prisoners," says Lilley. "With our backgrounds we know when people are lying and when something's not right."

Sympathy

Sympathy is the order of the day for the other category of work at Coast to Coast— when owner-drivers simply get into payment trouble. "They must at the first instant go to their trailer hire companies to discuss the problem," advises Lilley, "rather than risk having the trailer taken away."

It is often the case that the owner-driver has himself not been paid, but if his first instinct is to grab what he can, especially in cases involving liquidation, he may get into trouble.

Lilley warns against assuming rights of lien without considering trailer ownership. A haulier may have rights to the load, but not to the trailer, which could belong to a third party or a hire company.

"Owner-drivers often bury their heads in the sand, then before long we'll be knocking on the door. They may change their address and disappear for a while, but we've got contacts and well find them," says Lilley.

After all, if Coast to Coast can trace a reefer to Riga, the odd tilt in Tilbury, drawbar in Droitwich or skeletal in Skegne,ss is not going to pose a problem.

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Organisations: Norwich Union

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