08/04/2025
A 29-year-old Ballarat bloke has landed himself right in the thick of it, caught up in what’s shaping up to be one of the west’s wildest car theft rings.
Melton detectives busted open the organised syndicate last week, arresting four people and recovering 36 stolen cars in the process. The fella was interviewed and released pending further enquiries, but police reckon he’s not off the hook yet, with more arrests on the cards.
The whole thing blew open when a black Holden Commodore was nicked from a Caroline Springs café on March 23, and traced to a Truganina property.
With the Air Wing hovering above like a hungry hawk, cops spotted four stolen vehicles kicking back in a paddock. Once the crew saw the chopper, they scattered – some were later found abandoned across the southeastern burbs, while one clunker carked it and got bogged trying to leg it through a fence like a stunned mullet.
Turns out this crew’s reach goes further, with investigators linking them to a separate stash in Diggers Rest, where 30 other stolen vehicles – including a tow truck and a car carrier trailer – were uncovered earlier this year.
Police allege these jokers had been nicking high-end motors from suburbs all over Victoria – Brighton, Albert Park, Werribee, Essendon, Caroline Springs – and using onboard diagnostic tools to pull it off like they were in some dodgy Fast & Furious sequel.
And they weren’t just after the cars – the gang was allegedly flogging off stolen copper too. When cops raided the Sunbury property on March 31, they caught the crew red-handed, allegedly stripping copper for resale. Alongside the cars and scrap, officers also found m**h, Suboxone, ammo, and a couple of those diagnostic gizmos.
The alleged ringleader, a 26-year-old from Riddells Creek, has been slapped with a laundry list of charges – vehicle theft, fi****ms offences, dangerous driving, and more – and he’s been remanded to face Sunshine Magistrates’ Court on May 2.
A 43-year-old woman from Diggers Rest and a 28-year-old from Bacchus Marsh were also arrested and charged with theft and drug possession, and they’ll be fronting court soon too.
