A DISGRUNTLED ex-employee who stole a company car was caught by the vehicle’s tracking system even though he thought he had disabled it.

The unnamed Leicestershire man took the car, fitted with a Siemens VDO TrakBak unit, from his former employees. He knew about the device and activated its concealed driver-verification switch.

But the TrakBak National Control Centre remotely activated the system as soon as the theft was reported and the thief had the shock of his life when police arrested him a short while later in Watford.

TrakBak business manager David Child said: ‘One of the key features of TrakBak is that it can be ‘woken up’ by the National Control Centre when a vehicle is taken without permission, even if the driver has the keys and knows how the system works.

‘And that’s exactly what happened in this case. Using the real-time information provided by the system, the National Control Centre maintained a constant vigil over the vehicle and kept the police informed as to its whereabouts.

‘It was then only a question of time until an arrest could be safely made when the car came to a standstill in traffic on Watford’s Lower High Street.’