MIAMI – Homeowners with surveillance cameras and even alarm systems will want to hear about a sophisticated new criminal trend.
Authorities say crooks are using Wi-Fi jammers to disable those systems.
Local 10 News’ Layron Livingston spoke to a man who believes he was victimized by this crime trend.
Roger Williams, who lives in the Four Ambassadors condominiums in Brickell, has a doorbell camera.
It caught two deliveries, and then a few hours later, a man appears, eyeing those packages.
“You see them, there’s no one in front of my door, and then, all of a sudden, poof, they disappear,” said Williams.
Williams is convinced the mystery man is his porch pirate, and a savvy one.
“I think he may have used some sort of scrambler for my internet connection,” said Williams.
He was out of town when his uninvited guest showed up, this past Sunday, but his camera had been working just fine.
“You could see him doing something on his phone, and then he disappears around the corner,” said Williams.
After that, the camera feed suddenly stops. When it starts working again, his packages are gone.
In the surveillance video, Williams says you can see his porch pirate in the elevator, along with what appear to be his stolen packages, being stuffed in a bag around the same time his camera feed dropped out.
Williams said he contacted his doorbell camera company.
“They told me that the signal had degraded during that period, but they couldn’t tell me whether or not it was hacked, or whatever, they just blamed it on my internet,” he said.
The Miami Police Department is still investigating the theft, but the idea of crooks using Wi-Fi jammers isn’t far-fetched.
Police in California put residents on alert about it earlier this spring.
“As technology is becoming more and more sophisticated, we need to evolve,” said Miami police Officer Rafael Horta. “Cameras with an SD card that will that will continue to record even when it’s not connected on Wi-Fi is always a great idea, or a traditional regular hardwired camera.”