Surveillance footage at Salt Lake City International Airport shows a man calmly checking car door handles in a short-term parking garage until he found one that opened: a blue 2023 Lamborghini Urus worth roughly $234,000, left unlocked with the keys inside. He drove off, and as of the most recent update the truck still had not been recovered, according to KUTV’s report on the June 2024 theft.

Urus owners keep ending up in similar footage. In New Jersey, thieves smashed a window at a custom auto shop and stole a 2021 Urus valued at about $300,000, only to be caught after the owner’s hidden Apple AirTag led police straight to the vehicle following a high-speed chase through several towns, according to CBS News New York’s coverage of the arrest. The Urus is Lamborghini’s best-selling model by a wide margin, which also makes it the brand’s most visible target sitting in valet lines, hotel lots, and long-term airport parking.

Key Points

• A Utah Urus theft caught on airport security cameras in June 2024 involved a vehicle worth roughly $234,000; the suspect has not been publicly identified as of the most recent reporting.
• A New Jersey Urus theft ended in arrest only because the owner had hidden a $29 Apple AirTag inside the vehicle, not because of the recovered security footage itself.
• Insurance claims for catalytic converter theft alone jumped from 16,660 in 2020 to 64,701 in 2022, a nearly four-fold increase, according to a National Insurance Crime Bureau report, underscoring how much vehicle crime has grown industry-wide in recent years.
• Relay attack devices, which capture and rebroadcast a keyless fob’s signal to trick a car into unlocking and starting, have been documented by the National Insurance Crime Bureau’s own testing of a commercially available “mystery device” that could open and start test vehicles in seconds without a physical key present.

Why Keyless SUVs Like the Urus Are Especially Exposed

The Urus, like most modern luxury SUVs, uses a passive keyless entry system that unlocks and starts the vehicle as long as its fob is within a short range. That convenience is exactly what a relay attack exploits: one thief holds a receiver near the fob, often through a wall or window while the owner is inside a home or hotel, while a second thief holds a transmitter next to the car, and the two devices trick the vehicle into thinking its own key is present. NICB’s own testing found the process can take under a minute once a crew has the equipment. Neither the Utah nor the New Jersey case involved a confirmed relay attack, but security researchers and insurers point to the method as a major driver of the broader theft surge, precisely because it leaves none of the broken glass or forced ignition damage that used to make car theft obvious after the fact.

What Owners Should Do

• Never leave keys inside the vehicle, even briefly in a driveway or short-term lot; the Utah case only happened because the truck was unlocked with keys inside.
• Store key fobs in a Faraday pouch at home and overnight to block the signal a relay attack depends on.
• Hide a physical tracker like an AirTag or a dedicated GPS unit inside the vehicle in a spot a thief wouldn’t think to search; it’s what led directly to the New Jersey recovery.
• Park in covered, camera-monitored garages when possible, and request a spot away from garage entrances and exits where a thief can circle unnoticed.
• Consider a secondary mechanical lock on the steering wheel or pedal; relay attacks can start the engine, but they can’t defeat a physical lock that has nothing to do with the fob signal.

A quarter-million-dollar SUV sitting in a parking garage draws attention precisely because it stands out, and that visibility now cuts both ways. The same distinctiveness that makes a Urus a status symbol also makes it a repeat target once word gets around a specific garage, hotel, or neighborhood has one parked in it. The theft numbers are rising industry-wide, but the vehicles most worth stealing are still, overwhelmingly, the ones that get taken because of an unlocked door or an unprotected fob rather than any flaw in the car itself.