Authorities in Miami-Dade have charged two men over a string of vehicle thefts built on jamming gear and cloned keys.
NBC 6 South Florida, citing arrest reports, counted 21 thefts or attempted thefts countywide between August 19 and September 13. The favored targets were all expensive General Motors metal, with Escalades and Corvettes at the top of the list.
Investigators describe a blunt method. Signal jammers were used to knock out surveillance cameras and GPS tracking devices, key fobs were reprogrammed to open the doors, and other devices started the engines so the cars could be driven off.
A stolen BMW that crashed on September 26 led deputies to Ruiz, 23. The wreck yielded a haul of theft tools, among them a blank GM key fob, uncut fobs, remote transmitters, a signal jammer, face masks and a wireless scanner. Cell records and surveillance video placed him at multiple theft scenes, while a stolen Escalade found at his address had been stripped of its VIN.
Among the losses: an Escalade worth $115,000 found abandoned without a plate, and a $160,000 Corvette taken alongside a $145,000 Escalade from the same owner on September 8.
A second suspect, 20-year-old Roe Daymel Banos, was arrested later. Both face multiple counts.
The case shows how reliably jamming and key cloning still defeat factory protections, and why layered tracking matters when the first layer can be silenced.
