Border guards flagged down a white Ford Transit van some four kilometers outside of Komotini in northeastern Greece in January. A young Greek man drove while 11 migrants from Afghanistan and Iraq were squashed into the back. Among them were two underage boys who had crossed the Evros border with Turkey just a few hours earlier. The officers logged in the van’s plates and found it was registered with a car rental company in Athens.
Leased cars are the go-to solution for the criminal networks that smuggle undocumented migrants from Greece’s northeastern land border farther into the country. They found that stealing cars to do the job was too risky, so the gangs now hire people to rent the vehicles they need and others to drive them. The former pose as tourists at the rental companies and can rarely be traced; neither can the drivers, who are also temporary hires. The vehicles are most often found abandoned near the Evros River or in the mountain passes of Rodopi, occasionally banged up. The losses suffered by the rental companies – and especially the smaller ones – are quite significant.
To catch a thief
Zoe Stergiouda, a representative for Evros Car, an Alexandroupoli-based firm that has been around for 30 years, has seen the problem grow first-hand. “There are certain risk signals,” she says. “Like when someone is carrying around a lot of cash or claims they don’t have a lot of money, or shares too many details without being asked, which may indicate that they’re lying about why they want the vehicle.”
