They dressed as telecom technicians to empty cars in San Joaquín without breaking a single window

On Monday, August 10, Carabineros, Chile’s national police, arrested three men in San Joaquín, a district of Santiago, who had spent months emptying cars without breaking a single window. They wore corporate clothing from telecommunications companies. Among the items seized were signal jammers, a cordless angle grinder, fake license plates and a vehicle with a tampered plate. Between them, the three have more than 34 prior police records for receiving stolen goods, burglary of an unoccupied place, attempted robbery and theft.

What sets this case apart is not the loot. It is the disguise.

A theft you cannot see

From the outside, nothing happens. No noise, no broken glass, no forced locks. The driver thinks they locked the car and walks away; the jammer kept the lock from working, and the alarm never armed either. Victims usually find out only when they come back.

Not an isolated case, a pattern

This method has been documented in Chile for more than a year. In March 2025 it was detected operating outside schools in Ñuñoa. In May of that year came the case of journalist Karen Doggenweiler. In July, a mass break-in at a gated community in Chicureo used jammers to blind cameras and alarms. And in June 2026 we learned that a Chilean gang had exported the technique to the United States, where it stole more than US$5.5 million by attacking ATMs.

What San Joaquín adds is something else: professionalization. A group that dresses up as a telecom crew is no longer improvising. It is solving the problem of how to stay for hours on a public street, next to other people’s cars and with electronic equipment in hand, without anyone asking questions.

The law already covers mere possession

Since December 2024, Law 21.720 has banned manufacturing, importing, selling, using, possessing and carrying signal jammers in Chile. Penalties reach up to 10 years in prison, with fines that can exceed 6.5 million Chilean pesos, and confiscation of the device.

One point is worth stressing: the law punishes possession and use equally. There is no need to catch the device switched on for a crime to exist; carrying it is enough. That moves the problem to a very concrete place: being able to find and identify the device.

And that is no longer an open problem. Technology now exists that can produce evidence by identifying the device that is jamming, and it has been used successfully to catch criminal gangs. The technical capability exists and is proven in the field.

At Tank, we are putting jammer detection within reach of the private and public sectors. But a case like San Joaquín makes it clear that this cannot stay limited to isolated deployments. It has to become widespread and standard, one more tool in the fight against gangs that have already gone high-tech.