Stolen 1.5T Excavator worth £25,000 Recovered same day

A stolen Excavator has been found and safely recovered in Great Easton, within a matter of hours of first being reported as stolen from Cambridge thanks to the installation of a battery-operated tracking device from AMI Group.

AMI’s monitoring station received a phone call in the morning from a customer reporting the theft of the 1.5T Excavator machine which was fitted with the AT5 – a wireless, covertly installed battery-operated tracking device from AMI Group. The unit was immediately placed the AT5 into ‘finder mode’ so that the exact location of the stolen machine could be determined. The AT5 utilises state-of-the-art GPS (Global Positioning System), GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and RF (Radio Frequency) technology, with highly sensitive assisted GPS positioning accurate to within 1 metre. Once the AT5 is fitted to a piece of plant machinery, both AMI’s monitoring station and the customer concerned can also log on to the AMI Nexis web-based portal or AMI Nexis app to establish the exact GPS destination of the asset. Carrying out minute-by-minute monitoring, AMI’s monitoring station could see that the stolen machine had been taken to a location in Great Easton.

One of AMI’s finders set off in pursuit of the stolen machine and the AT5’s GPS signal led the finder to field next to the B184. AMI Group gained a positive sighting of the stolen Excavator machine and the police were able to enter the site and recover the machine. AMI’s finder completed a witness statement for the police and AMI’s customer was able to recover the stolen machine on the same afternoon, just hours after first being reported as stolen.

The AT5 actively monitors over £475 million worth of assets and has helped customers across the length and breadth of the UK track down and recover stolen equipment. Offering the industry’s longest lasting battery life of up to 20 years without need for replacement or recharging, it is virtually impossible to trace in the event of a theft as it has no external wires, antennas or connections to trace. It is scanner-proof, remaining undetectable via a wake-sleep cycle mode, and because it is palm-sized at just 54 x 65 x 37mm, it is much smaller than comparable tracking devices yet still offers an IP68 waterproof rating.