Locksmith Services Blog

Tampa locksmiths have to stay vigilant to help their customers prevent car theft, and it is a good thing that there are so many good anti-theft devices on the market today, because thieves can become quite organized and sophisticated. It is one thing to try to protect yourself from random individuals who are not very savvy or experienced, but when you have organized theft rings doing business over a number of years, they can get pretty good at what they do.

“Car cloning” is a way that car thieves can sell the cars that they steal and have them appear to the buyer to be legal. They take the license plate, vehicle identification number, and other identifiers from a legal vehicle and place them on a stolen one that is a similar year and model. The person whose car was stolen is obviously victimized by these car cloning theft rings, but the buyers of the cars are also left holding the bag when the authorities find out that they are in possession of a stolen vehicle that they thought they bought fair and square.

A man named Joe Pirrone was the victim of a Tampa based car cloning theft ring that was recently broken up by the FBI. Pirrone took out a loan on a $27,000 pickup truck only to find out that it was stolen and being towed out of his driveway by order of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office while he was enjoying a short vacation in Fort Lauderdale.

“I am making payments on a piece of property that I don’t have. They can’t even repossess it. The bank doesn’t have any help to offer me,” said Pirrone.

The ring had stolen over 1,000 different vehicles that resulted in losses exceeding $24 million. Before the FBI was able to put a stop to it, they had actually been stealing cars and cloning them for around twenty years.

This particular auto theft ring has finally been brought to justice, but the story is very informative. When you realize that there may very well be highly experienced and organized car thieves operating here in Tampa and elsewhere around the country, it underscores the importance of taking preventative measures. You have to make sure that you are protecting your vehicle, but you must also beware when you are buying a car or a truck so that you don’t wind up like Joe Pirrone, who is stuck with a $536 a month payment on a truck he doesn’t have.

Source: CNN

When you need a locksmith in Tampa that you can trust for fast service at affordable prices, call 24/7 Locksmith Services at (813) 994-8383.

As an Atlanta locksmith, a particular piece of news that I read today was very interesting to me. A law was just passed in the state of Oregon House of Representatives by a landslide vote of 56-3 that is requiring locksmiths to become licensed by the state. Locksmiths will now have to pass a test that proves that they understand the trade, and they will also be required to pass a background check.

It is amazing to realize that in most states, including the state of Georgia, you need to have a license to cut hair, but there are no licensing requirements for locksmiths whatsoever. If you own a locksmith company in Atlanta you would have to have a business license of course, but the state requires no professional licensing, no testing, and no background check.

Ethical Atlanta locksmiths have always found this lack of industry regulation to be kind of perplexing. I hate to put it like this, but locksmiths are people who know how to break into your car, your house, and your business. We know how to get past locks. You would think that if a state was going to regulate any type of industry at all, even the cosmetology trade, they would want to make sure that people who open locked doors for a living were licensed. And why they are at it, they might want to make sure that locksmiths are free of any convictions for things like, say, breaking and entering. Do you think that might be a good requirement for a Georgia locksmith license?

I’m a GA locksmith who does things the right way, and the recent locksmith scams that I have been reading about really make my blood boil because these characters are making it harder for real locksmiths. Scam artists create many different company names with fake addresses and get different phone numbers for them. Then they place ads in the Yellow Pages, and all of the calls to these numbers are routed to the same call center. When people call, these scam locksmith companies pull the bait and switch game. They quote one price over the phone, and then charge way more when they get to the job. If the locksmith industry was regulated and people had to be licensed and go through background checks and follow certain rules, these locksmith scams would be much more difficult to pull off. It seems to me that the lack of licensing requirements for locksmiths in Georgia and other states invites scam artists to try their luck as a locksmith.

I applaud the state of Oregon for passing this law, and I only hope that GA locksmith licensing is next. One thing that I want to make perfectly clear is that even though there is no licensing requirement for locksmiths in Atlanta and throughout the state, 24/7 Locksmith Services hires only qualified and reputable locksmiths. Our guys are clean as a whistle, we treat our customers with respect, and we always honor our quotes.