DMV: 50% more stolen vehicles recovered on Long Island in 2023

New York DMV investigators saw a 50% increase in recovered stolen vehicles on Long Island last year — part of a new targeted auto-theft-reduction strategy statewide — but those numbers represent just a fraction of the cars and trucks swiped across Nassau and Suffolk in 2023, new data shows.

Gov. Kathy Hochul touted the results of the state's Comprehensive Auto-Theft Reduction Strategy, also known as CARS, which led to the recovery of 286 vehicles statewide in 2023, valued at $8.6 million, and 157 auto parts, including high-value catalytic converters, worth about $152,000. Those recoveries, state officials said, are up 19% from the $7.3 million worth of vehicles recovered by the DMV in 2022.

Nearly half of all vehicles recovered through the CARS program last year were located in New York City, officials said.

Stolen out of state

The automobiles, DMV officials said, were snatched — often out of state — and then sold to unwitting New York buyers who discovered they were stolen only when attempting to register the vehicles.

On Long Island, the DMV recovered 42 vehicles in 2023, valued at $1.2 million, and 18 auto parts, valued at more than $15,000, state officials said. Those numbers are a 50% increase from the 28 vehicles recovered in 2022, worth nearly $700,000, along with another nearly $16,000 in recovered parts.

“I launched the Comprehensive Auto-Theft Reduction Strategy to support our law enforcement and protect New Yorkers from theft, and these investments are paying off,” Hochul said in a statement Wednesday.

But the $55 million statewide CARS program, which was unveiled by the governor in September and includes ramped up enforcement by the state police in high-theft areas, faces stiff headwinds on Long Island with the sharply increasing number of auto thefts across Nassau and Suffolk.

Dramatic increase

Data from the state's Department of Criminal Justice Services shows auto thefts increased dramatically on Long Island in 2022. 

For example, there were 967 auto thefts in Nassau in 2022, up 53.7% from the 629 vehicles stolen one year prior and the most since just over 1,000 vehicles were taken in 2012, the data shows.

In Suffolk, 1,471 vehicles were reported stolen in 2022, up 20.8% from the 1,218 taken in 2021 — the most since nearly 1,600 cars and trucks were swiped in 2010, the figures show.

Through the first six months of 2023, there were 415 reported automobile thefts in Nassau and 618 in Suffolk, according to the most recently available data from the Department of Criminal Justice Services.

The agency does not track if stolen vehicles are recovered.

The Nassau police department, which covers most, but not all of the county, said it investigated 560 motor vehicle thefts in 2021 while 61%, or 344 vehicles, were ultimately recovered. The following year, the department investigated 968 thefts and recovered 668 or 69%, officials said. And last year, Nassau investigated 820 auto thefts and recovered 502 — just over 61%, department figures show.

Suffolk County did not provide its auto theft data to Newsday.

'High-tech thieves'

Robert Sinclair Jr., spokesman for AAA Northeast, said in previous years, many auto thefts were the product of unscrupulous repair shops, which sold the vehicles for parts. More recently, Sinclair said, thieves target luxury vehicles and ship them, with their parts intact, overseas.

“High-tech thieves using devices to pick up the signals from unshielded key fobs are gaining entry to vehicles parked at home and driving the vehicles away,” Sinclair said.

Reducing the number of auto thefts statewide will take coordination between law enforcement and the public, said Walter McClure, a spokesman for the state DMV.

“Buying a car is second only to buying a home in terms of expense,” said McClure, who urged the public to use a free lookup service when purchasing a vehicle to determine if it has a record of an insurance theft claim and has not been recovered. “And the last thing you want is for it to be suddenly gone.”

A recent increase in auto thefts in Rochester and Buffalo, state officials said, was linked, in part, to viral social media posts showing young people how to steal Kias and Hyundais. Localized data, state officials said, show that motor vehicle thefts are down 50% in Rochester and 45% in Buffalo since the implementation of CARS, compared with the prior 4-month period.

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.