An ‘Army’ of Volunteer Sleuths Are Out Hunting for Your Stolen Car
An ‘Army’ of Volunteer Sleuths Are Out Hunting for Your Stolen Car
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By Jessica Pena
Car thieves — those people who’ve stolen your car and are now using it as part of their nefarious crime spree — are nothing new. It’s long been the case that when a victim becomes aware of a car theft, there’s not much they can do other than pray and hope that the perpetrators will eventually let it go. And it’s certainly not a bad way to go about things: It prevents a tragedy happening to the car’s rightful owner, which is often a tragedy in and of itself. But as the New York Times recently lamented, when the car owner decides that they want the thief to be held accountable for their crime, there just isn’t much to hold them accountable for: “The police have to prove that a car was stolen and that it was the car’s owner who reported it.”
Now, a new effort to solve this problem is underway, with an online group of volunteers who are dedicated to finding stolen cars and arresting the thieves through their own online sleuthing. The project, called “CarRentals.com,” bills itself as a safe, secure system for car owners, letting them rent out their cars to third party owners for a period of time, as long as they’re willing, and then collecting evidence to prove that the car was their own.
“It’s not as easy as you think. CarRentals.com is like buying insurance, but on your car,” said the site’s founder, Patrick Corrigan, who started it with his wife after they were robbed twice in their own car. “CarRentals.com is, in a sense, buying your car back.”
In a sense, it’s about as cheap as you can go: $20 to rent a car for a month (though this could get expensive — you’ll have to take care of any damage to the rented car, or the third party’s insurance will likely