£120,000 stolen vehicle haul seized at Dover as £40,000 Lexus found stripped to pieces inside van

Published 15 October 2026, 10:40

• Kent Police's Rural Task Force spot-checked hundreds of vehicles at the port, uncovering cars, caravans and a horsebox.
• Thieves hide stolen motors in lorries to smuggle them abroad 'undetected', warned Sergeant Ross Haybourne.
• Nobody was arrested, but Haybourne cautioned offenders their 'crimes will catch up with them in the end'.

Kent Police's Rural Task Force seized £120,000 worth of stolen property at the Port of Dover and across rural Kent, including a £40,000 Lexus found completely stripped for parts inside a Mercedes Sprinter van.

The haul, recovered across three days in late September 2026 during an operation targeting thefts of agricultural plant and machinery, included two cars, two vans, two caravans and a horsebox all believed to have been stolen.

Officers also found two more cars that had been entirely dismantled for parts, one of them the £40,000 Lexus.

The first phase of the operation took place at the Port of Dover on 23 and 24 September, where officers — supported by the National Construction and Agriculture Theft Team (NCATT) — spot-checked hundreds of vehicles for stolen goods.

Sergeant Ross Haybourne said: "When criminals steal vehicles and agricultural machinery, they do not often drive them around in plain sight. Instead they load them onto the backs of HGVs and other tall sided vehicles in order to transport them across or outside of the UK undetected."

Among the vehicles stopped at Dover was the Mercedes Sprinter van, which contained both the stripped Lexus and a stripped Hyundai Ioniq worth around £10,000.

The van and the parts were seized, along with a Nissan Navara valued at £20,000 and two caravans worth a combined £10,000.

Haybourne said the "vast majority were carrying legitimate products," but officers were pleased to locate several stolen vehicles that were seized and "will now be returned to their rightful owners whilst criminal investigations into the circumstances continue."

In the second phase on 29 September, officers patrolling rural areas of Ashford, Canterbury and Maidstone located and seized a £15,000 Mercedes car and a £16,000 horsebox.

The truck transporting the horsebox was also impounded because it had not been taxed.

Nobody was arrested during the operation, but the details of all drivers were recorded and these records will feed into continuing criminal investigations.

Haybourne warned that anyone who takes vehicles and machinery from agricultural properties or elsewhere "should not feel like they have got away with it if they are not immediately detected, because their crimes will catch up with them in the end."

He added: "Operations like this demonstrate the proactive approach we take to identifying stolen property and preventing it from being exported outside of the UK. It also sends a message to criminals who plan to transport stolen goods throughout Kent and beyond that we look forward to seeing them in the future."

Sergeant Mark Yarrow of the Port of Dover Police described collaboration between his force and organisations including Kent Police and NCATT as "vital in tackling rural crime, particularly cross-border offences involving high-value vehicles and agricultural machinery."

"By sharing intelligence, expertise and resources, we can strengthen our response, better protect rural communities in the county and make the Port of Dover unattractive to criminal networks," Yarrow said.