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Sprawling East Coast car theft ring traced back to South Bronx garage, prosecutors say
By
Ben Feuerherd
Published Apr 30, 2025
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Court papers filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District
By
Ben Feuerherd
Published Apr 30, 2025
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Federal investigators have tracked cars they said were stolen by a sophisticated and sprawling East Coast car theft ring back to a parking garage near Yankee Stadium, according to a criminal case filed in Brooklyn.
The crew targeted airport rental cars, according to federal prosecutors. Thieves would steal keys from the rental cars while also planting GPS tracking devices inside of them. When customers drove off from the airports, the thieves would monitor their location and steal the cars, prosecutors said.
Police found at least seven of the cars that were stolen by the group in a parking garage on Morris Avenue in the Bronx, according to federal law enforcement.
Details about how the thefts were pulled off are included in a federal criminal case brought earlier this year against Aboubacar Kaba, who is accused of being one of the ring’s leaders. In an affidavit in the case, an FBI agent wrote that investigators from the bureau and the Port Authority are investigating crimes that happened between May 2022 and November 2023.
Kaba is expected to make his first appearance in a Brooklyn courtroom in the coming weeks, said John Marzulli, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office. No one else has been charged.
An attorney for Kaba declined to comment.
In each theft, Kaba or another member of the ring would break into a parked car at a rental business and steal a key that had been left inside, according to the affidavit.
They would then hide a cellphone in the car that had a location-tracking app running. When someone rented the car, the thieves would follow the GPS and steal it after the driver parked, according to court documents. The thieves pulled this off at airports in cities across the east coast, including New York, Newark, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, DC and Atlanta.
In one case, thieves tracked an Audi Q7 from Newark Airport to the man’s father-in-law’s house in Bloomsbury, New Jersey, according to court filings. It was later recovered in Delaware, according to court filings.
In another case, investigators said Kaba tracked a Toyota Highlander rented from JFK Airport to the Hotel Nyack, a boutique hotel in the Rockland County city. The car thieves allegedly stole the car from the hotel parking lot.
NYPD officers ultimately recovered that Highlander at the parking garage on Morris Avenue near East 156th Street in the South Bronx, according to court filings.
In February 2023, NYPD officers got a report of a stolen car at the garage and then checked databases to see if any other vehicles there were reported stolen. They found seven cars stolen by the ring parked in the garage, according to legal filings.
Police in Georgia arrested Kaba in November 2023, days after prosecutors say he stole a Jeep Gladiator that had been rented at Atlanta Airport. A month later, federal investigators in Brooklyn obtained a search warrant for his phone and determined the device was near several locations related to the car thefts.
The phone was also near the Morris Avenue garage a day before one of the stolen cars parked there, according to court documents.
Kaba was charged by federal prosecutors in February and later indicted by a grand jury in March. He faces three counts of interstate transportation of a motor vehicle and one related conspiracy count, according to the indictment.
He’s currently being held at a jail in Georgia and has not applied to be released on bail, according to court records.
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Ben Feuerherd
Ben Feuerherd covers public safety and policing for WNYC and Gothamist. He previously covered federal courts for The New York Post and The Messenger. His work has also appeared in POLITICO, the Daily Beast and NBC New York. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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