Don’t leave your car keys by the front door: Baltimore-area police warn of new threat

In the Baltimore region, auto thefts are mostly down, but for a slight uptick in the city. Authorities, however, are sounding a warning about a near-silent but growing threat.

Industrious thieves are buying devices made for locksmiths and auto repair shops — available on the internet for a modest cost — to intercept the signal of car key fobs and steal vehicles.

The risk is particularly acute in a city where residents largely park on the street, often within feet of their front doors. Baltimore Police commanders are cautioning residents at community meetings about keeping their car keys far from their front doors to avoid falling victim to a growing national trend that is now hitting Charm City.

Key fob cloning and other forms of theft using electronic devices are the latest developments in a decades-long technological arms race between car thieves, auto manufacturers and police.

At stake is one of people’s most valuable assets.

Earlier this month, in Southwest Baltimore’s Saint Josephs neighborhood, 32-year-old Brooke Faller walked out of her front door with an armful of cleaning supplies to drive to work.

“What the hell?” she recalled thinking. “Where’s my car?”

Faller called the police to report her white 2018 Honda Accord stolen. The officers who responded, she said, told her she was likely the latest victim of key fob signal-intercepting theft that is increasingly targeting Hondas and Acuras. Faller’s neighbors later shared home security camera video showing the car thieves under the cover of darkness lingering on her block for about a half hour before driving her car away, but the footage didn’t reveal how they stole the vehicle.

Major Kurt Yourkovic, commander of Baltimore Police’s Northwestern District, told residents at a police-community meeting earlier this month that police had started to see the technique used “throughout the city.”

Baltimore Police could not make available data by deadline for this story on how often thieves use the newly adopted technology to snatch vehicles, and a Baltimore Police spokesperson generally downplayed the prevalence of the trend without providing details.

But publicly available city crime data shows that more than 3,000 cars had been reported stolen in Baltimore this year as of Tuesday, a slight increase over 2025, but a big drop from a massive surge in 2023. Auto theft year-over-year is down in Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Howard counties, but police there said that key fob signal stealing has cropped up in their jurisdictions, too.

Faller says she’s losing hope that she’ll ever see her Honda again and feels violated by the theft. She’s also grappling with the prospect of life without her family’s only vehicle until she can save up to buy another one.

“It made me paranoid, like is somebody watching me? Are they following me? Are they watching my moves?” Faller said. “It’s got me really depressed, honestly. I really depend on my car. I use it to get back and forth to all my cleaning jobs. I use it to take my kids to school.”

Car theft expert Bill Woolf was a cop in the 1980s and said thieves have come a long way since they would smash a window, rip open the steering column and twist two wires together to start a car. Or stick a screwdriver in the ignition and drive away.

Teens have also used a viral social media video to learn how to easily break into certain makes of Kias and Hyundais by jamming a USB drive into the ignition system, said Woolf, the mid-Atlantic region operations director for the National Insurance Crime Bureau, a nonprofit that works with law enforcement agencies to investigate auto thefts.

Thieves continue to adapt. And the comforts of modern vehicles are also their biggest weakness.

Cars no longer come with physical keys to open or start the vehicle. Now, there’s keyless entry and push-to-start, all requiring computers and an electronic signal.

“That’s where they’re exploiting it,” Woolf said.

The electronic devices thieves are buying capture the signal from a key fob to either program a new fob or use a computer to mimic one.

It’s happening in Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and, now, across Baltimore.

Blanca Tapahuasco’s middle son, 19, returned to the family’s house in Southeast Baltimore’s Patterson Park neighborhood after leaving to visit a friend in June.

“Mom, my car is gone,” Tapahuasco recalled him saying.

The loss stung, his mother said, as he’d worked late-night shifts at Sparrow’s Point to save up money for the down payment on the black 2018 Acura sedan.

“My son became so angry,” Tapahuasco said. “I remember him saying ... ‘I’m going to find the person. I don’t care. I’m going to sue them.’”

Arch McKown, the Patterson Park Neighborhood Association safety committee chair, said he’s heard from many neighbors with stories similar to Tapahuasco’s and talked to numerous police officials about the theft trend. In the police precinct that encompasses his community, the Southeastern District, nearly one car has been stolen every day this year, city crime data shows.

Auto thefts are up 34% year-over-year in the Southwestern District, where Faller lives, according to police statistics.

She purchased what she described as her dream car after six months of her family not having a vehicle over the winter of 2022, when she had to trudge through rain and snow to walk her kids to school and work long hours at Starbucks to save money.

The car allowed her to start a cleaning business, grocery shop and shuttle her kids to school.

Now, she’s trying to keep up with monthly car payments for a vehicle she no longer has. Her insurance plan doesn’t cover rentals, so the cost of the 10-day rental car Friday comes out of her pocket.

“It really sucks,” Faller said.