Tijuana Municipal Police arrested five members of a car theft ring at Plaza 2000 shopping center late Friday night after a security guard reported a suspicious Ford Fusion that had been entering the mall repeatedly for several days.
Officers responded to the guard’s alert and found methamphetamine inside the vehicle. They detained all five suspects, ranging in age from 18 to 27. The group allegedly used a single parking ticket to smuggle stolen Kia vehicles out of the lot, bypassing the automated exit barriers without raising alarms.
Parking Ticket Trick Exploited Automated Gates
The scheme was low-tech but effective. By reusing the same parking ticket, the ring could drive a stolen car into the plaza lot and then exit through the automated barrier as if they were a regular shopper leaving after a brief visit. The method avoided the fees and attention that a lost or expired ticket would trigger at the gate.
Plaza 2000 sits on Boulevard Agua Caliente, one of Tijuana’s main commercial corridors. The mall draws steady foot traffic from both local residents and cross-border visitors, and its large parking structure makes it a frequent stop for those driving into the city from the San Ysidro port of entry.
One Suspect Wanted for Murder Since 2021
The arrest turned up more than a car theft operation. One of the five suspects, 27-year-old Juan Antonio, had an outstanding murder warrant dating back to 2021. The drug possession charge and the homicide warrant point to a criminal operation that extended well beyond stealing vehicles from parking lots.
All five suspects were turned over to the Fiscalía General del Estado (FGE), the Baja California state Attorney General’s office, for further investigation and prosecution.
Kia vehicles have been frequent targets of theft rings across Mexico and the United States in recent years. Certain Kia and Hyundai models gained notoriety for a security vulnerability that made them easy to steal with basic tools, spawning a wave of thefts on both sides of the border.
The arrest was first reported by Punto Norte on April 19.