Alarm system bypassed on X5 by late night intruder...

[drgav2005]

Woke up this morning to find my BMW X5 (E70) 2007 had been broken into. Thankfully nothing was stolen and no damage was done - but the criminal had left the doors slightly open so the seats were soaked by the overnight rain.

Checked my CCTV footage and can't believe the crook managed to get into my (locked and alarmed) vehicle so easily… probably took 60 seconds at the most. No idea how he managed it as he was on the other side of the car from the camera, so difficult to see. The alarm did not go off and no warning lights came on. Bl**dy furious!

Anyone else had this happen to them? Are there any dealer changes required or tricks of the trade that can stop this happening again?

I have all the keys and the car was *definitely* locked and alarmed. Given the lights did not flash when he opened the car it looks like he had totally bypassed the alarm system, rather than cloning the keyfob and opening as usual (with flash of indicator lights and rear lights / sidelights coming on)…

Thankfully I keep nothing of value in the car (i.e. house keys / phone / wallet) - I shudder to think what could of happened if I had. Will be talking to dealer about this tomorrow….

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.

[belleair302]

Buy a much better alarm and movement sensor detector. Factory Fitted units like sat nav are never as good as specialist units. Tyres, fuel, oil and a decent alarm / tracker are the best improvements that can be made to any car.

[phelix]

There seem to have a been a spate of incidents where a jammer is used to prevent a car from locking and someone can check the cars out at their leisure to see which ones are unlocked. Are you confident that you saw the lights flash and the locks clunk that particular evening?

[john_p]

Yes, this happened to me about a month ago with my 328 on a private driveway. I can't be certain I locked it, but in the morning a door was ajar and the car and boot had been gone through.. may well have been a jammer used to prevent it locking, or they had 'some way' of getting in.

[Beardy10]

Very sorry to hear about this, especially as I have an E70 myself. A friend of a friend had something similar happen to his E46 M3 though that did set the hazard lights off....he saw it on the CCTV from the car park it happened in. I know a little more detail about how the thieves did that as the police told him it was a known problem/method with E46 M3's though I suspect all E46's....not going to post more details on here for obvious reasons. If you want to PM me feel free.

[LordGrover]

YHM

[TheEnd]

There's 2 ways really, one is to jam the lock signal, so it isn't locked. That's most likely what has happened, the other way is apparently from code grabbing, and breaking the code to the next unlock signal.

I'd need to have a check into the rolling codes, but i don't think that's actually possible, although it has been claimed.
If that was the case, you'd see the flash on unlock.