2022 Highlander XSE Theft Recovery Pics

A good friend is the lead tech at a body shop that's affiliated with several major insurance carriers.

They are doing a theft recovery on a '22 XSE this week.

Here's some photos and a brief rundown to give an idea how things went down and what's involved in getting the car back up and running.

FASTC: Car was not breached at all, the door handle is still operational, no additional key fobs programmed.

They likely used the relay attack method. No evidence of the bumper being tampered with so that probably rules out the CAN Invader attack method, not sure if this is even possible on this trim.

It was recovered after it was left to cool-off, the thieves will drop it off at some quiet neighbourhood, rip the DCM Telematics Transceiver out and wait a week or 2 for the retrieval team to come pick it up and take it to the port.

In this case they cut all of the harnesses plugged into the DCM, removed the cover and took out the backup battery and tossed it. They left the DCM unit in the car and walked away.

A bunch of other stuff was broken behind the dash.

It's also waiting for new bumper parts and a headlight that were damaged during the theft. Apparently these car thieves don't drive all that well.

The harnesses are on backorder so it'll be weeks or months before the owner gets their car back.

Be proactive and implement additional security measures, use a faraday box, protect your OBD port, install a third party GPS tracker like an Apple Airtag, install a high end security system like IGLA, etc. etc.
If you rather it stolen instead of recovered, don't call the police for 2 weeks, it'll be well on its way to West Africa by that time.