When most people think of outlaw motorcycle gangs, they might think of drug dealing, gang wars and large men with facial hair on even larger bikes. Now, in a strange story out of Southern California, hacking can now be added to that list.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, in conjunction with state authorities, has arrested members of a motorcycle gang accused of hacking into and then stealing more than 150 Jeep Wranglers from the San Diego area, which they then took across the Mexican border to have stripped down for parts. Nine members of the Hooligans bikers club were indicted in the scheme and are facing charges of conspiracy to transport stolen vehicles in foreign commerce, although have yet to face charges related to hacking the stolen vehicles.

According to local reports, the accused are alleged to have stolen the vehicles by exploiting a design feature of the Jeep Wrangler that allowed them to gain access to a proprietary database that contains codes that can be used to create duplicate keys for each car.

How they organized to do so reads like a television episode. The gang organized themselves into “theft crews,” with each member of the crew having different roles including leader, thief, transporter, scout and key cutter. In an initial scouting phase, gang members drove around San Diego to identify potential Jeep Wranglers they could steal. Once a vehicle was identified, they obtained its vehicle identification number, and other members of the crew who had access to the proprietary database containing replacement key codes would download two codes from the database. One code was used to cut a physical replacement key for the targeted vehicle, while the second code was used in a handheld device to overcome the vehicle’s built-in engine immobilizer.

Once they had gained access, the vehicles would be driven south of the border to be broken up for parts, with revenue from the parts used to buy drugs, which they then brought back into the United States for sale.

The only thing not clear is how the gang obtained access to the Jeep database. The indictment notes that the access was obtained from a local Jeep dealership but didn’t say whether the owner of the business handed over the details or whether the gang had managed to hack into the dealership’s computer network.

Photo: Thesupermat/Wikimedia Commons