Criminals are stealing hundreds of thousands of Kias and Hyundais — and TikTok is to blame

"I started freaking out. I was like, 'Am I dreaming?'" she told me.

Patti Lebeau-Chorn experienced a similar nightmare one morning last August. She had parked her 2015 Kia Sorrento, which her late parents had helped her buy, across the street at a golf-course parking lot while volunteering at her temple in Los Angeles. But when she went to drive home, she couldn't find it anywhere.

Lebeau-Chorn and Jenkins are just two victims of an unprecedented surge in car thefts that has swept across US cities in the past two years. In Milwaukee, car thefts have doubled since 2020. In St. Louis, they spiked 157% from the second half of 2021 to the second half of 2022. Other major metro areas across the country — New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles — have seen similar increases.

The cause of this wild car-theft spree? A viral TikTok. The "Kia Challenge" video, which first appeared in 2021 and regained popularity in July 2022, showed how to easily hijack certain models of Kia and Hyundai vehicles using only a USB cord. While the video was quickly taken down by TikTok each time it resurfaced, the damage was done: 70% of the cars stolen in Milwaukee last year and 50% of the cars stolen in Chicago this year were from the two South Korean manufacturers.

The situation has become so critical that two major auto-insurance companies, State Farm and Progressive, have stopped insuring vulnerable Kia and Hyundai models. And dozens of class-action lawsuits filed around the country are attempting to force the manufacturers to either issue a recall or fix the cars' vulnerability. The trend has become not just a financial burden for consumers and a legal nightmare for Kia and Hyundai, but has spotlighted what happens when a business cuts corners: It's often the people least responsible who bear the burden.

Safety shortcuts

The TikTok video that sparked the challenge — a how-to reportedly created by user @robbierayyy — exposed a security flaw in Kia models from 2011 to 2021 and Hyundai models from 2015 to 2021. The cars from that time don't have electronic immobilizers, a safety device that uses a unique chip in the key fob. Cars with this tech won't start unless they recognize the correct key, making them far more difficult to hot-wire. Without that system, anyone could unscrew the steering column in the older Kias and Hyundais and insert a USB into the ignition before driving away.

The simplicity of this "hack" led to a huge surge in thefts of the cars. While there's no federal database of thefts by specific model, the numbers in large cities are staggering. In Seattle, thefts of Kias and Hyundais increased by 363% and 503%, respectively, between 2021 and 2022. In Chicago, 1,000 Kias were stolen in October alone. And in Portland, Oregon, the number of stolen Kias increased by 916% from January 2022 to January 2023, while Hyundai thefts jumped by 768%. Both the Seattle and Los Angeles police departments put out notices tying the trend to the TikTok challenge.

In response to the crime wave, Kia added immobilizers to their 2022 models, and Hyundai has added them to cars built since November 2021. So far there's been no recall on the already-compromised models, though Kia and Hyundai both noted in statements to Insider that they are providing steering-wheel locks to affected car owners through some police departments — in Kia's case, 23,000 locks to over 120 departments nationwide.

But many people have questioned why the companies didn't have such a standard feature in their cars in the first place. In 2015, 96% of vehicles from other manufacturers had immobilizers, but only 26% of Kia and Hyundai cars did, according to a Highway Loss Data Institute report. While the US does not mandate the tech, electronic immobilizers have been common since the late 1990s, when the European Union mandated them for all new cars sold there. Neither Kia or Hyundai have explained why their vehicles didn't have this safety feature.

Ann Davison, the Seattle city attorney, acknowledged TikTok's role in the theft spree but placed the underlying blame on the car companies themselves. "What really has happened is that Kia and Hyundai chose to cut corners in cost in their least-expensive models in a period of years," she told me. Davison is one of the lawyers who has filed a class-action suit against the manufacturers (one lawyer estimated several dozen such lawsuits existed across the country). The suits were recently consolidated into one case in California, the home of the two manufacturers' American headquarters.

Jonathan Michaels, a lawyer at MLG Attorneys at Law in California, who is representing Lebeau-Chorn, said his firm had been watching the situation unfold since the Kia Challenge took off in the middle of last year. "We thought that Kia and Hyundai might take some type of corrective action to prevent further harm," he said, either by issuing a recall of the affected cars or offering compensation to victims. "We were surprised when they didn't."

Michaels' complaint alleges that the manufacturers failed to disclose that the cars lacked immobilizers, "thereby misrepresenting the vehicles' safety, ease of theft, and value to consumers." He also argued that the real problem came down to the bottom line. "The reality is these are just very cheaply made cars where every corner is cut to save a nickel," Michaels said.

In a statement to Insider, a Kia spokesperson wrote that "potential lawsuits against Kia by municipalities are without merit. All Kia vehicles are subject to and comply fully with rigorous testing rules and regulations outlined in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards."

Both Kia and Hyundai told Insider that in response to the thefts, the companies have introduced a free anti-theft-software upgrade, as Hyundai noted, "to prevent the vehicles from starting during a method of theft popularized on TikTok and other social media." The upgrades are being offered through Hyundai and Kia dealerships, and Hyundai's CEO has said the company is prioritizing the vehicles "most targeted by thieves."

A nightmare for carmakers

The ripple effect of the Kia Challenge could have extreme repercussions for manufacturers — especially since State Farm and Progressive decided not to write insurance policies for the vulnerable models in some cities. According to Mark Friedlander, the director of corporate communications for the Insurance Information Institute, it's a significant move. "They're taking unique steps we've never seen before," he told me, adding that Kia and Hyundai "need to do much more to resolve the issue."

And it's not just insurance that's becoming a problem. Andrea Amico, the founder and CEO of Privacy4Cars, a company that addresses automotive data-privacy issues, told me other companies are taking steps to avoid risk. "There are garages that are refusing to have these vehicles in their garage because they're concerned about the liability if the car is stolen," Amico said. "And if you cannot insure your car and cannot park, this has an immediate impact on what the asset is worth." Luckily for Kia and Hyundai owners, the still-pervasive shortfall of vehicles for sale means the value of the cars hasn't dropped too much despite the theft problem. But that could change.

Moving forward, manufacturers will likely need to think about how quickly a viral video can expose product flaws, Venkatesh Prasad, the senior vice president for research at the Center for Automotive Research, told me. "The question is what do you do about that exposure," he said. Prasad said that consumers expect companies to immediately issue fixes like hardware or software upgrades, but these Band-Aid solutions could mean that break-ins will become more sophisticated, because unlike producers of security systems, perpetrators have more free time and share their tricks on social media. "It's a cat-and-a-mouse problem," he said.

Long-term risks or repercussions for the companies, if any, will likely hinge on the outcomes of the lawsuits. In the end, the real brunt of this problem won't fall on giant, global car manufacturers but on the people who are having their lives disrupted.

'Kia Boys back at it'

Five days after her car was stolen, Lebeau-Chorn received a call from a police officer that it had been found. A friend drove her to a tow yard, where she found her car in a sorry state. The door handles had been spray-painted black and the wires from under the hood and the steering wheel had been ripped out, she told me. Clothes she had planned to donate were strewn around the car, the license plates were missing, and the glove compartment was flung open. Her insurance company declared that her car was totaled. "It was a horrible time for me," she said.

According to police data and other reports, most of the stolen vehicles have been recovered — the cars largely intact, but trashed. After Jenkins' car was stolen, a tracker in her car led the police to where it was left, 14 minutes from her house. In order to haul the car back home, she had to use the same tactics employed by the thieves: cracking open the steering column and using her own USB cord to start it. Fortunately, the only real damage was a broken window, but she couldn't find a replacement in Atlanta and ended up driving five hours to get it fixed.

The culprits behind the thefts often refer to themselves on TikTok as "Kia Boys." (In a screenshot of what appears to be the original video, @robbierayyy used the hashtag #kiaboyz.) The joyriding has resulted in a couple fatal accidents. In October, four teens between 14 and 17 were killed in Buffalo, New York, after a stolen Kia they were riding in crashed. In Illinois last month, three 13-year-olds were arrested after being seen in a stolen Kia that hit and killed a 71-year-old man. And while there are plenty of videos of joyriders, there are also dozens of viral videos from people documenting their experiences recovering stolen cars. In one, the user @mrsmillionaire went inside her Kia to find the USB still dangling from the ignition. "That is a phone charger y'all," she says. In another, @lina.bakman filmed the aftermath of what seemed like a theft attempt, showing her backseat full of broken glass and the steering column busted open, with a caption on the video that read "good try Kia boys."

For the most part, though, the trend has been more of a financial burden for consumers. Jenkins said the car theft cost her about $400, money she had set aside for a special trip for her daughter's 13th birthday to the Mall of America's Nickelodeon Universe theme park in Minnesota. They weren't able to go.

"I'm pissed," she told me.

Even though the original video was taken down, the hack is now out there, and the thefts haven't shown any signs of slowing down. After Lebeau-Chorn's Kia was stolen, she had no choice but to rent a car while she shopped for a new one. Her insurance company gave her $16,000 for the totaled car, but the additional financial strain was still a burden. After months of careful consideration, she chose a 2022 Subaru Forester. All told, the theft cost her over $29,000.

Britta Lokting is a journalist in New York. She's written for The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, VICE, and elsewhere.