A Katy couple made their initial court appearance Friday, October 9, accused of running a scheme that investigators say siphoned off more than $3 million worth of luxury vehicles by hacking into a commercial shipping database used to transport cars across the country. Dheyaa Abd and Iman Al Saedi remained in jail Friday, October 9, facing charges tied to an alleged operation that rerouted transport shipments to intercept high-end vehicles before they reached their intended destinations.
According to court records cited by ABC13 Houston, Abd, Al Saedi and two additional suspects are accused of hacking the database to alter drop-off locations, allowing the group to steal vehicles mid-transport. A judge said during the hearing that the defendants were involved in a high-end theft ring in which numerous vehicles were stolen via transport carriers, and that they had hacked into a central database to reroute shipments of luxury cars to different drop-off points, per the same court proceeding.
Houston police raided Abd's mechanic shop near Fondren and Richmond this past Wednesday, according to records referenced in the case. Investigators have not detailed what, if anything, was recovered from the location, and police declined to comment further on the broader investigation. Authorities do expect additional arrests as the case develops.
A National Pattern of Database Hijacking
The scheme described in Harris County court records mirrors a nationwide trend flagged by federal investigators. The FBI's Philadelphia Division has issued a public alert seeking victims of a similar interstate scheme, in which perpetrators created fake accounts or compromised legitimate carrier profiles on Central Dispatch, a major commercial auto-shipping platform, to obtain release paperwork and divert high-end vehicles across state lines, according to the FBI.
Autoblog reported in July that vehicle theft syndicates have increasingly relied on fraudulent Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration numbers and stolen Central Dispatch credentials to claim high-value transport jobs. Platform owner Cox Automotive has rolled out mandatory biometric identity verification for users, as detailed by Autoblog. It is not clear from available court records whether the Katy case involved Central Dispatch specifically or a different shipping platform.
Houston's Place in a Shifting Theft Landscape
The Katy arrests land amid a complicated statistical picture for vehicle theft in the region. The Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands metro area ranked fourth nationwide in total vehicle thefts in 2025, with 23,659 stolen vehicles, while Texas as a whole recorded 75,269 thefts to rank second among all states, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
Fort Bend County Constable Precinct 1 reported a near-doubling of auto theft complaints year-over-year as of August, according to Click2Houston.
Potential Charges and Statutory Exposure
Investigators estimate the alleged theft ring involved vehicles worth more than $3 million.
Knowingly accessing a computer system without consent and with intent to defraud also constitutes Breach of Computer Security under Texas Penal Code § 33.02, according to the Law Office of Matthew D. Sharp.
What Comes Next
Abd's attorney plans to review the charges over the weekend and gather additional information before responding further, per court filings. Houston police have not released the identities of the two additional suspects named in the case, and the investigation remains active.
The arrests follow a string of Houston-area crackdowns on sophisticated vehicle theft operations in recent months. On July 30, Houston police and regional agencies arrested five people at a Weberville storage site for allegedly running a car theft ring involving altered vehicle identification numbers; blank key fobs that could be reprogrammed were found, as Hoodline previously reported.
