--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: Hi, I'm Taylor Durrell. I'm a freelance writer in Columbus, Ohio.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Taylor, thanks for joining us today. How did you come to write about this story where people are stealing Kias and Hyundais?
--:-- Taylor Durrell: So I first found out about this phenomenon by my sister's car being stolen. My sister's car was stolen by a group of kids, and it was just severely damaged and not where it was supposed to be. And the only thing stolen was my sister's strawberry candy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's quite a unique detail. Was it stolen by an 8-year-old?
--:-- Taylor Durrell: No, it was stolen by 12 to 15-year-olds, yes. That is the demographic of the Kia boys, as I later found out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Kia and Hyundai thefts are up 100%. More than 100,000 of these cars went missing last year. The Kia boys are coming up on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from the FIFA World Cup.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Kia Boys aren't just a car theft ring. They've become the kind of cultural phenomenon. They have their own slang. They make their own music. They, of course, upload these videos of them driving around, often to the very music that they make. And they call themselves boys because these boys are definitely underage?
--:-- Taylor Durrell: Yes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So most of these kids don't even have a license. And so you'll often find that the younger the kids are that are stealing these, the more cars they end up stealing because of how fast they total them.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: That's right. So the kid will steal a Kia, they'll crash it, and then they'll be like, well, the night is still young, so we must steal another.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When we're talking about the Kia Boys, we're not just talking about car theft. We're talking about entire culture that's been developed. So a lot of these joyrides are filmed often on Snapchat. And some of them end up making it to social media sites like TikTok.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: That's right. And these videos of the joyrides get spread around as a kind of status symbol.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And because I believe it started during the pandemic, I think you have the situation where parents who are these essential workers are going off to work and the kids have to stay home and do online school. And in some cases, they don't even have the access to the online schools. And so they look elsewhere to have fun, I guess, to do something outside.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: That's right. And they figure out through word of mouth and through the internet that you can actually steal Kias and Hyundais. And that becomes kind of a real life GTA.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The video game Grand Theft Auto, for those who don't game.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: What? Yes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so you have this personal experience where your sister's Kia gets stolen. It somehow ends up in a backyard. But this isn't just your sister. How big is this phenomenon?
--:-- Taylor Durrell: It's huge, and it's impossible to stop. Because once the knowledge spread of how to steal these Kias and Hyundais, there was no infrastructure in place to be able to stop it. Because it's a technical problem. And so if you wanted to stop it, you would have to recall every car between 2011 and 2021.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wow. A decade of Kias and Hyundais? Right. It's like millions of cars, basically, would have to be completely recalled and fixed.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: That's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A new report shows car thefts nationwide are surging, topping 1 million last year. In Chicago, up 55%. In Columbus, they spiked from 3,500 to over 4,000 just at the half-year point. And Milwaukee, where it started, they went from seeing 3,500 stolen cars in 2019, and only a small percentage of those were Kias and Hyundais, around 6%. And then by 2021, you see over 10,500 cars stolen. And 67% of those were Kias and Hyundais.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: That's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you see this huge spike in car theft. And it was very confusing to people because nobody understood that it's kind of like a movement. It's not like these kids are stealing these cars and selling them. They're stealing them and joyriding them, and then they're being found in these random places.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: That's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it sounds like it starts off sort of regional. How does this become something that's happening maybe all over the country?
--:-- Taylor Durrell: Yeah, it definitely spreads through the internet like wildfire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Around this time last year, you see a YouTube video uploaded by this Milwaukee YouTuber called Tommy G. And he follows this group of Kia boys around. Can you show us how it looks to steal a car?
--:-- Taylor Durrell: I can show you a side-go car.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Then he's interviewing these Kia boys and they say, you want to see how I do it? Let's do a simulation of him stealing my car.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: And normally when you steal a car, you would have to find, you know, these wires and cut it. But instead, you take out the ignition cylinders. You got a flathead. You stick to a flathead right here. And then you want to pull it down and then break it down. And then it's going to be like a little silver piece. Where the key goes in, if you can pry that out with a screwdriver, there's something underneath that, and that is perfectly shaped as a little rectangle. You start it with a charger piece like this. That's where you can stick the USB in and you just turn it like a key.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we're not talking about hacker software here. We're just talking about you put a little USB in here because it perfectly shaped and you turn it.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: That's right. It's very low-tech. It's very low-tech hack and it democratized car theft, I would say.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so on TikTok, you will see this little clip of this kid saying, this is how you do it. And so this is what's become known as the source of the Kia boys or what Boomer journalists call the Kia Challenge.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: Okay, Boomer. It's kind of not a thing, you know. Nobody's saying, you know, this is a Kia Challenge. How many Kias can you steal? It's really just this video got uploaded and kids saw it and started stealing Kias.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the kind of checklist of what a Kia boy is behind it has gone kind of ignored, which is the fact that it's these underage kids stealing Kias just for fun, just to joyride them and total them, as opposed to just stealing them and selling them for economic ends.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: That's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you have kind of this spectrum of car theft that has emerged, and the Kia boys are on the joyride slash for fun side, whereas I think traditional car thieves are on the economic side, where they want to steal and sell to make some money.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: That's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so for the Kia boys, it's about joy, it's about fun. Has any of this turned violent?
--:-- Taylor Durrell: Yes. There are obviously car wrecks that result from those actions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They hit a bus?
--:-- Taylor Durrell: And so you have, for example, one of the kids who was in the Tommy G YouTube video ends up crashing into a school bus later that day. He's accused of not just hitting the bus, which lifted off the ground, but the SUV in front of it and an MPS truck.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The front seat passenger in the white Kia is blurred in this video because he was dangling unconscious from the door by his knees.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: That passenger was severely hurt and remains in a medically induced coma and sustained a crushed skull, fractured arm and brain bleed that required surgery.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you have kids in Columbus, you know, who aren't wearing seatbelts when they're doing this, because why would you put on a seatbelt when you're going on one of these joyrides if you don't even know how to drive a car?
--:-- Taylor Durrell: If you saw their faces, they're babies, and they're out here stealing cars and doing reckless behavior.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so there were these three kids that went full speed and got into a wreck, and they got ejected from the car, and two of them ended up dying, and the third was in serious condition, and all of them were 14 years old.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: Well, Jared, Jen, if it takes a village to raise a child, some might say our village here in Columbus is failing some of these teens.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Columbus police say they're doing everything they can, but it's going to take everyone to keep more children from dying like this.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: And one of those boys, you know, was supposed to start high school the next year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it can be tragic. And also for the people whose cars these are that they're stealing, because they obviously don't have access to a car for X amount of time until it gets back to the owners.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: And they usually do find their way back to the owners. But it usually takes forever for these victims of the Kia boys to get their cars fixed because you have a huge backlog.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wait times on necessary parts to fix the car can be three to six months.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: It's a destructive trend that is costing people money, time, and their cars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the Kia boys are stealing these Kias and Hyundais for fun, whereas you also have other forces, for example, the Game Over Kids in Columbus, which is a gang that also steals Kias and Hyundais, but they do so to rob banks or commit murders and other very violent crimes.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: Are these various factions stealing Kia's getting caught?
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: Yes, not always. I would say a lot of the times they get away because they leave these cars abandoned. And because there's so many cars, you can't brush for prints in every single one.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: But when they are getting caught, they're underage, so they're not getting jail time. They're usually let go same day, and they're not forced to pay anything for the damages.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: Taylor, what are Kia and Hyundai, which I believe are kind of like cousins-related companies, what do the companies have to say about all this?
--:-- Taylor Durrell: So the initial response from Kia and Hyundai was basically they shrugged their shoulders and said, we're following all the laws. These cars are up to standard. Attorneys for the automaker say that vehicle theft is a consumer's risk. Their ignition systems are not covered by warranty because they're not defective. And that car owners could have purchased upgraded security measures.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: More recently, as these lawsuits have been filed from cities like Cleveland, Milwaukee, Columbus, there's a class action lawsuit filed in California. They say Hyundai and Kia haven't done enough to warn consumers about the vulnerable ignitions and didn't install immobilizing technology that's been around since the 90s.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: And they started to walk their way back and say, look, we will do what we can, basically. So they started donating tens of thousands of steering locks to all these police departments across the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, since November, they gave 26,000 steering wheel locks to 77 agencies across 12 states.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: Of course, this wasn't enough. There is also a free software update that you might be eligible for. The manufacturers rolled it out in February. It would extend the alarm sound from 30 seconds to a minute and require the key to be in the ignition.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: And so as all of these lawsuits continue to unfold. Auto giants Hyundai and Kia agreeing to pay up to $200 million to settle a class action lawsuit covering roughly 8 million vehicles.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: A lot of that money is going to go towards updating the security systems in these cars. Victims eligible for payments of up to $6,300, plus up to $4,000 for associated costs like raised insurance premiums.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: But as I said, there's so many cars being totaled that you have this backlog. And so all of these car owners who are already having a hard time getting their cars fixed after they been essentially totaled by the Kia boys after this lawsuit you going to have an entire new group of people millions of cars who want to get their cars updated.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: And so you have this even bigger backlog. And it's not clear even if these security upgrades will do anything to deter the Kia boys because most of them are just updating the alarms as opposed to actually fixing the problem by installing some kind of electronic immobilizer so that the Kia boys can't actually start the cars themselves.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: So what does that mean? Does that mean that this trend isn't going anywhere? It really feels like the Kia boys are unstoppable right now because everything we've thrown at trying to stop them hasn't worked so far.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: Taylor, I just, before we go, I want to ask how your sister's doing. How's her Kia? Is she okay?
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: She is obviously a little bit traumatized. But after the car got fixed, which took over three months, we got a steering lock and it remains on the car. Even if we're just going in to pick up something very quickly, if she just has to do something in and out, the steering lock stays on regardless.
--:-- Taylor Durrell: Because the Kia boys often strike when you least expect it.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: Taylor Durrell is a freelance journalist based in Columbus, Ohio, where his sister's Kia was stolen, but they only took her strawberry candy.
--:-- Ray Surrett: Hi, I'm Ray Surrett. I'm a professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: Professor Surrett, thanks for joining us today.
--:-- Ray Surrett: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: So the Kia boys are stealing these Kias and Hyundais for fun, whereas you also have other forces, for example, the Game Over Kids in Columbus, which is a gang that also steals Kias and Hyundais, but they do so to rob banks or commit murders and other very violent crimes.
--:-- Ray Surrett: Yeah, I mean, from my vantage, it feels like building more secure cars would be a good place to start.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: Maybe they felt who the hell would want to steal a Kia, but, you know, apparently enough people really jumped at the opportunity.
--:-- Ray Surrett: You don't drive a Kia, do you?
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: Me, no. I barely drive it. I drive a Mazda, which I've now had for like a decade or more.
--:-- Ray Surrett: Sweet. My car is more likely to have somebody tuck a $20 bill under the windshield wiper with a sympathy car.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: I do not worry about it getting stolen.
--:-- Ray Surrett: Professor Raymond Surrett, University of Central Florida.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: Our show today was produced by Hadi Mawajdeh. It was edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Patrick Boyd.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: The rest of the Today Explained team is comprised of Halima Shah, Avishai Artsy, Amanda Llewellyn, Miles Bryan, Siona Petros, and Victoria Chamberlain.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: My co-host is Noelle King.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: Our managing editor is Matthew Collette.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: We got lots of extra help lately from Jolie Myers and Michael Rayfield.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: We use music by Brakemaster Cylinder.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: I'm Sean Rameswarram from Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: Today Explained is distributed by WNYC.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: My bike got stolen once and it sucked.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: So my deepest sympathies to all the Kia and Hyundai owners out there.
--:-- Sean Rameswarram: Support for this show comes from Macy's.
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--:-- Sean Rameswarram: No matter your vibe, you can explore the Macy's Fall Fashion Guide and find the perfect look for you. Shop in-store or online at nacy's.com.
