A Katy couple made their initial court appearance Friday, October 9, accused of running a scheme that investigators say siphoned off more than $3 million worth of luxury vehicles by hacking into a commercial shipping database used to transport cars across the country. Dheyaa Abd and Iman Al Saedi remained in jail Friday, October 9, facing charges tied to an alleged operation that rerouted transport shipments to intercept high-end vehicles before they reached their intended destinations.
According to court records cited by ABC13 Houston, Abd, Al Saedi and two additional suspects are accused of hacking the database to alter drop-off locations, allowing the group to steal vehicles mid-transport. A judge said during the hearing that the defendants were involved in a high-end theft ring in which numerous vehicles were stolen via transport carriers, and that they had hacked into a central database to reroute shipments of luxury cars to different drop-off points, per the same court proceeding.
Houston police raided Abd’s mechanic shop near Fondren and Richmond this past Wednesday, according to records referenced in the case. Investigators have not detailed what, if anything, was recovered from the location, and police declined to comment further on the broader investigation. Authorities do expect additional arrests as the case develops.
A National Pattern of Database Hijacking
The scheme described in Harris County court records mirrors a nationwide trend flagged by federal investigators. The FBI’s Philadelphia Division has issued a public alert seeking victims of a similar interstate scheme, in which perpetrators created fake accounts or compromised legitimate carrier profiles on Central Dispatch, a major commercial auto-shipping platform, to obtain release paperwork and divert high-end vehicles across state lines, according to the FBI…