Vehicle crime in the Netherlands .A research into freight exchange fraud

Road transport is a vital part of the Dutch economy. Unfortunately road transport crime occurs frequently in various forms, disturbing the market and creating losses. This thesis aims to start academic research into freight exchange fraud, an upcoming form of crime, and to enhance understanding of vehicle crime in the Netherlands. Vehicle crime originally consists of three components, namely cargo theft, vehicle theft and combination theft. Is freight exchange fraud a new component of vehicle crime or is it an innovation and did vehicle crime increase in total? Or did vehicle crime undergo a change resulting in innovation of vehicle crime and do the same actors behave differently? Our research investigates if freight exchange fraud is an addition to vehicle crime in the Netherlands. We perform a correlation analysis and a vector autoregression to retrieve information about relationships and dependencies between the different components of vehicle crime. Results of our research are mixed. Our research indicates that criminals stealing cargo or vehicles can be seen as experts, who are operating in a homogeneous group of actors. If circumstances remain unchanged, criminals are expected to remain stealing. Cargo theft criminals are found to be different than vehicle theft criminals. We did not find statistical significant evidence for an additional component of vehicle crime. Based on a descriptive analysis freight exchange fraud does seem to be a more advanced way of stealing cargo, vehicles or combinations and can therefore not be seen as an individual component of vehicle crime.