Andrew Helmus

No, my dad is not a freshman in college. He's 50 years old and shares a house in Sherman Oaks, CA with one of his good friends. They both work in the motion picture industry and have for years. I'm sure that you can respect the steep rental/housing market in the Los Angeles area. I live in Florida where rent is pretty cheap in comparison. My dad's half of rent alone is three times what mine is.

Andrew Helmus

Thanks for the input! I'm certainly not looking to find out exactly how to do this, because I don't need the knowledge. I guess my main goal was to find out if this was possible, or if what happened could have been (as someone else suggested) a case where someone possibly broke into the house to obtain the keys, and thus obtained access to the vehicles in that sense.

It also seems like there's not too much he can do about it to prevent this from happening again. If someone wants access, they'll get it one way or another..

Evlengr

There is a saying, "Locks are for honest people". It is not an easy task. The equipment to do this runs around $100k so to go to all that trouble I would think they would take the car and sell it in an Ex iron curtain country. I bet there is data kept that shows the operations of the car somewhere in the dme/ecu. Chances are they simply left it unlocked.

sf_loft

There's a video on you tube of Europeans stealing BMW 1M's (or any bmw) and can do so with blank fob keys. There's a device used to program blank keys to a car and it was replicated by the Chinese for much less. The device basically plugs into the obd port of any modern BMW and within seconds, the blank key is as good as the original. BMW does not come with an alarm standard and most opt to not add it, which makes it that much easier. With our comfort access keyless start and entry, the fob will continue to emmit a signal without pressing a button. The thief can simply stand next to you at the mall, capture the signal and follow you home.

LeoR604

Yeah, saw this "cloning" on one of the TV newsmagazines. They can clone car keys, credit cards, etc, but they do have to be very close to you. Essentially, you have to be targeted, as in they really want YOUR car. I'd be a little worried if I was driving an exotic, but I don't think S4's are in that much demand in the Ukraine.

moose_head

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/lockcode.asp

BaLLZDeePNYC

Theres a thread on AZ in Tristate section stating there is a huge uprising in Audi thefts in the Tristate area... Reminds me of when B5s were new and my buddy had his laser red S4 taken from the front of Peter Lugers Steakhouse while he was at an engagement dinner...