4

Don't Just Call A Locksmith; You'll Get Scammed

Last January, The New York Times published this article, which points out that fraudulent locksmiths dominate the paid search results for "locksmith" in many American cities. They advertise 24-hour availability and crazy-low prices, sometimes as little as $15 bucks. But when they arrive, they inevitably wind up claiming the lock is too complicated, cut through it, and charge hundreds of dollars for the favor.

It turns out that scam locksmithing is a sort of cottage industry for Israeli immigrants, and companies will offer to sponsor visas for fresh-faced, morally flexible young men, as long as they don't mind a little borderline extortion. There are hundreds of these companies, and they all seem to use nearly identical clip art:

So if you've locked yourself out of your car, how can you avoid getting scammed? Caleb suggested a few rules:

1. Always try to find a local company. A lot of scammers use 1-800 numbers and don't have a local shop, or any shop at all at the address provided.

2. If your state has a locksmith license program, always ask for their license number. You can also visit the website findalocksmith.com to find an ALOA (Associated Locksmiths of America) registered locksmith based on your zip code. If they are registered with ALOA, they are legit.

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3. Keep better track of your keys.

3

No Lock Is As Secure As You'd Think

You might expect professional locksmiths to be bullish on the ability of a solid lock to protect your home and precious Beanie Baby collection. (They're going to bounce back any day now!) But a career of dealing with the aftermath of break-ins has shown Harvey how easy it is to bypass a lock: "You look for the removable air conditioner in the window or the insecure patio glass door ..." According to him, the air conditioner is the Achilles heel of most people's home security: "Only once have I been called to install security fasteners on an air-conditioned unit. Turns out a previous tenant wanted back in, so they unscrewed the A/C unit and climbed in through the hole."

And if that seems too complicated, you can always take it apart with a kick in a few seconds.

Engaging that deadbolt feels secure, but it's about as safe as putting a Kevlar patch over your nipple and wading into a gunfight. "You can encase your house in six feet of concrete, and I'll still get in if I want to. It just takes time ..." Harvey explains that "99 percent of people's locks are fucking garbage. Looking out my window, I can see 15 houses that wouldn't take me longer than 15 seconds each to gain entry to ..."

He's not talking about picking those locks, cat-burglar-like. He's talking about breaking through them. Over his entire career, he "saw about 10-15 confirmed cases of lock destruction in forced entry, and one confirmed case of lock-picking ..."

Harvey's also picked up on some neat tricks for breaking and entering: "A group of kids ... buy a $2 bottle of syrup, pour it all over your living-area window pane, [then] when they smashed the pane, it doesn't make the classic window break sound, it's rather quiet and subdued ..."

Pinnacle Foods
"Sarge, we've caught their accomplice, but she's not talking."

2

Criminals Can Call Locksmiths Too

Sure, some criminals might use sites like Rift Recon or spend hours learning how to pick locks. Most skip to the chase and call a locksmith themselves. Harvey told us the story of one customer who wanted help getting into someone's car ... "Customer only gave a first name until I required a surname. The car was a 10-year-old pickup, with scratches and tears all over the inside window of the driver's door, window sill ripped off. Standard procedure is to work on the passenger door, so any damage is not related to us. I scoped out the interior and couldn't see the keys, so I called the guy and he said they'd be under the seat. No problem, I opened the passenger door and went looking. No keys. I called the customer back to find out what the deal was, and said [I'd] need some more concrete proof that he owned the vehicle. His voice started getting sketchy. He said fine, he'd visit the workshop that afternoon with paperwork. Never did see him."

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"Wait, how am I supposed to get to their shop ..."

Jim has an even sketchier experience with this kind of "customer." He says, "Opened a home for a guy once who had proper ID ... As usual when I go to a home lockout, I asked to see proof of ID. The husband's license had the address on it, so I let him in. When the police showed up, I understood what was happening. The wife went out of town earlier in the day, which the husband knew, since he was tracking her cell phone. The wife had the locks changed so he could not get into the home. He wanted his Porsche that was in the garage. The Porsche was in the divorce proceedings, so he was not to move it via a court ruling."

Edvvc/Wiki Commons
Good lord. A Porsche driver acting like a douchebag?! Up is down! Cats and dogs living together! Madness!

1

A Locksmith Might Get Shot In The Line Of Duty

To an outside observer, a working locksmith doesn't look much different than a working burglar. And for good reason -- the skills of a locksmith translate directly to burglary. So good locksmiths spend a lot of time vetting their new employees. Harvey notes that in Australia, "In most workplaces, an apprentice will spend three to four years working beside a tradesperson to learn how to judge these types of situations and make their own calls."

Caleb explained how it works in his state, Tennessee: "We have to get ID numbers for any lockouts we do, as well as re-keying houses and making keys to cars we also have to match the ID to the name on the title to make sure that person is allowed to get keys for the vehicle/house ..."

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"What's with the getup?"
"I'm ... uhhhh ... cold."
"It's July."

For instance, this attempted burglary was foiled because the locksmith the burglar hired grew suspicious and called the police. Good locksmiths like Caleb are always worried about unwittingly helping to commit a crime:

"The worst job I had to refuse was pretty recent. A lady locked herself out of a house an hour and a half away from us, but she had been in process of selling her house and it fell through, and she didn't have the paperwork with her to prove she was the owner of the house -- no recent mail to the house, and she had an out-of-state ID. We had to turn her down because she had no proof at 10 o'clock at night. I felt bad that I couldn't help her get back in the house, but the law is the law. And if we don't follow it, we can lose our license or get sued."

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There's really no way to train for the "Looks like you're sleeping on the porch tonight" conversation.

But upstanding locksmiths run afoul of law enforcement sometimes. Jim even had a cop pull a gun on him once while trying to get into a foreclosed home on behalf of the bank that owned it: "I tried the front door, then walked around to the back door. I'm sure a neighbor saw me trying to get into the home and called 911. When I came back round the house, I was carrying my tools and the deputy walking up mistook my cordless drill as a gun and drew his gun. I dropped the drill, then went to clean out my pants ..."

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