How did someone get a key to our car?!?!

[Brett Dikeman]

At 8:30 PM -0800 3/4/04, Scott Sutherland wrote:
>My wife's 2001 Audi A4 Quatro was stolen about a month ago, and it 
>was just recovered.  Surprisingly,  guy the police arrested in the 
>car actually had a key!  It wasn't one of ours -- we still have the 
>three originals.  This  was a straight key (not one that flips out 
>from a key fob).  It has a metal blank and a square-ish plastic head 
>that has an imprint of something that looks like a wrench, just 
>below the Audi logo.  On one side of the blank it has "AKS", and on 
>the other there's a small "w" near the head and "NAA" near the top 
>of the groove.  It appears to be a valet key, since it won't open 
>the trunk. We're in Seattle, Washington, USA, if it matters.
>
>Does anyone know what kind of key this is or how the thief might 
>have obtained it?  We're pretty upset that a car that was supposed 
>to be so tough to steal was so easy, and any help/insight will be 
>much appreciated.

Who knows- some people are masters at what's called social 
engineering.  Ie, you find an internal number for a company, and call 
up pretending to be someone in said company.  You'd be amazed at how 
often someone gets away with it.

It is impressive, as I'm pretty sure immobilizer keys have been on 
Audis for a number of years and these aren't terribly easy to bypass. 
Usually you have to have one of the already-recognized keys to 
program in a new one, although APR sells a "cloning" program- perhaps 
the thief got matched key+ECU from someone.  Nothing would surprise 
me these days.

The cops should be able to figure out pretty quickly how he got the 
key; may be he worked at the dealer or something.  Out of curiosity, 
how was it recovered?  Can't leave us hanging here :-)

Brett
-- 
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~brett/