Car Thieves vs the Almost Final GlitterBomb 5.0

(glass shatters) - This guy is stealing my package from a car,

and this guy took my package off a porch,

but what they don't realize is this is the final glitter bomb,

Glitter Bomb 5.0.

And for the final year, when you lift the lid,

the glitter is delivered by drones. (drones whirring) (drones clattering) Five years ago,

when these two stole a $6 package from my porch,

little did they know

that singular act on an otherwise unremarkable lovely spring morning would set in motion

a series of events

that would unleash buckets of glitter in the homes of would-be porch pirates nationwide

and eventually lead to the takedown of a $60 million international crime ring.

So today, not only will I show you what happens

when you combine autonomous drones

and glitter,

and then what happens

when you get into a chess match with a bunch of car thieves,

but I'll end the whole series with an update on what happened to those

massive scam call centers we infiltrated

and exposed in India.

Now, if you're new here,

the 10-second recap is that after that package was stolen from my house,

the police wouldn't do anything about it even when presented with the evidence.

So at that point, I knew that to avenge the theft,

I was gonna have to use my engineering skills to go full "Home Alone."

- Ow! - Yes! -

And seeing how this is the final glitter bomb video,

I think it's worth a brief recap of how the box design has naturally

evolved over the years.

Out of the gate in year one, it was a simple concept,

where when you took the lid off the bait package, this cup would spin,

unleashing a pound of the world's finest glitter,

and then hidden inside to record all the action, we had four phones,

plus a canister fart spray,

in an effort to encourage the thief to get rid of the box,

so we could go and retrieve it.

And that went pretty well.

So we spent the entire next year working on version 2.0,

where we doubled the amount of fart spray and drastically improved the formula,

which ended up nearly killing Macaulay Culkin.

(Macaulay coughs) - Oh, I still smell it.

(Macaulay coughs) God. - We also switched to biodegradable glitter

and added a meaningless countdown- - Five,

four. - And some fake police chatter- - Seems the package may be in

motion as well. just to make things more exciting.

Then, for year three,

we doubled the fart spray canisters once again to a total of four

and added a handle the thief would be tempted to grab,

which we covered in that super sticky mousetrap goop.

And for the previous two years,

the package thieves would often shove the lid back on right away,

which covered up the cameras.

So we added these posts near the top of the box

that would passively pop out,

which made it impossible to put the lid back on once you'd removed it.

- 14,

13. - We also added flashing police lights

and made a doormat

that had these conductive charging contacts

so we could keep the whole box fully charged until the moment it was

stolen.

Then for Glitter Bomb 4.0, as soon as you touched the lid,

it would get shot straight up into the air,

complements of these two boxing gloves attached to pneumatic pistons.

We also added an actual car horn (horn beeping) to make things more exciting

and redesigned the cup

so that by using the centrifugal force generated from spinning,

you could passively get three chances to shoot some glitter instead of losing it

all in one single shot.

Then for the porch,

we built a fake planter box

that would slide over

and hide the package at night

so the homeowners wouldn't have to worry about bringing it in.

And we were guaranteed to get it stolen in the day

when the light was better.

And all of that brings us to year five, Glitter Bomb 5.0.

I knew this was gonna be the last year,

so I decided to go for broke and attempt the biggest redesign to date.

And this is a terrible idea, by the way.

In engineering, if something is working well enough,

conventional wisdom states you should basically change nothing

but pretend like you changed a lot.

So for starters, last year,

we had four vials of fart spray for a total of 20 milliliters,

and for this year, because we're not messing around,

we have a one-liter tank.

And for those of you keeping track at home,

that's 50 times more fart spray.

To pull this off, instead of using a rotating-cam system like before, now,

we have a peristaltic pump

that continually forces the fart spray through two nozzles

and basically never lets up.

And because I can't exactly explain how much worse something smells over video- -

Aww! -...this is a sensor

that measures the number of particulates in the air,

and the more particulates, the more intense the smell.

And if we place last year's glitter bomb in the chamber,

it measures 250 particulates of nastiness per liter,

whereas this year's tops out at 750,

which means it's not only gonna last a lot longer,

but it's gonna be three times more intense.

Now, to house that massive reservoir of fart spray,

we had to expand the footprint for the box,

which means we add room underneath it to house the brains of the system

on an upgraded custom printed circuit board

that communicates directly with all four phones.

And quick shout-out to my friends at T-Mobile, 'cause last year,

we found they had the best coverage where we were placing the boxes.

So this year, they hooked us up,

and let us put them all on their network.

Then for the glitter delivery mechanism,

the idea was to hack some of these mini drones

and rewrite their code to make them autonomous,

where they could fly themselves without needing to be in communication with the computer.

So the idea for this year is the thief would bring the bait package

back to their house,

then remove the lid, which would lower these two doors,

allowing the drones to wake up and take off.

And so instead of a single concentrated area of glitter from a spinning cup

like before,

the drones would just meander all around the house,

leaving millions of tiny shimmering reminders not to take stuff that isn't yours.

And as part of our code rewrite, if the proximity sensors register someone approaching,

they'll just casually fly themselves to a different part of the room.

And all of that perfectly sets up the checkmate,

because while they're fully distracted dealing with the drones,

the box starts to drastically change the room's air quality at a rate of

one liter per minute.

This design was ambitious

and arguably at a much higher risk of failure in the field,

but then we took it one step further by designing a sister box

that could be used for a car break-in.

Since I live near San Francisco,

which is the smash-and-grab capital of the world, two years ago,

we went right into the lion's den,

which placed the box in a somewhat alarming predicament. - I could bang it.

I could bang... (alarm blaring) (color lines beeping) - And while tempting,

it seemed irresponsible to have a couple drones flying around inside a moving vehicle,

so this box could be triggered remotely via text message

and can activate the fart spray without needing to be open.

And then right before the nozzles kick in,

this 360 cam pops up to cover all the action.

And if at any point the camera senses it's being tampered with,

just like one of those fancy hood ornaments,

it will retract itself back inside the box.

So after about 10 months of designing, building, and testing,

we set them out on a bunch of porches

and in a bunch of cars,

and we waited.

And we didn't have to wait long. (glass smashes) (upbeat music) - Brand new

in the box,

bro. - It's your guys's now! - Huh?

Check it out.

I guess it's mine now. - Yeah. (laughs) - Guess this (beep) is nice,

homie! - I forgot I was gonna ask him what happened,

but they just pulled out a gun? - Yeah,

they said I pulled out a... (box beeping) (alarm blaring) I don't think we

can... (machine whirs) - 15,

14, 13.

Three, two, one. (alarm blaring) Activation complete.

Recovery sequence initiated. (police radio chattering) -

And I really appreciate the hustle from these guys,

especially because when all is said and done,

they just decided to make this their neighbor's problem. (color lines beep)

When we retrieve this next box,

as you can see, it was completely destroyed, and the phones were gone.

But thanks to those blazing T-Mobile network speeds,

we're able to recover the following footage from the cloud. - But our neighbor here...

Put it down a little.

Our neighbor here, he has a camera.

That's what I was gonna give you for Christmas last year. (woman laughs) - Yeah.

No way. - What?

The new one, huh? - Yeah,

it's the new version. - Can we just leave it in the car for

now? - Yeah,

we'll leave it in the car for now. - 'Cause we're not trying to-

- Bring attention to us. - I'm not saying

that I did anything wrong. -

So they eventually took this home

and were apparently pretty upfront with their kids about where they got it from.

(kid gasps) - It's a VR.

That's really what it is.

It has the handles

and everything. - So they go for like 400 bucks? - Keep it.

Keep it.

They can get another one. - Yeah, you can make money,

or you can give it back. - I kinda wanna open it.

Do you wanna open it? - Let's open it. (alarm blaring) - Oh my God.

It smells! - They were (beeps) lying! - Mom!

Mom, I think it is a bomb. - Mom! - Get it out of there!

(camera clattering) (color lines beep) - And in addition to porches,

just like in years past, we placed some boxes by group mailboxes,

so that way, we can track the number of good Samaritans

that will call the number on the box from year to year. - It's

for me? - It's for you. - Yay! - Yah,

yah. (sighs) (alarm blaring) (machine whirring) - 15, 14, 13,

12... (color lines beep) (alarm blaring) - Mom!

I think it's a scam!

It's a (beep) scam.

I knew it. - Scary. - It's a (beep) scam!

(beep) you, YouTubers. (machine whirring) - What do you think this is? - Yeah,

(beep) this is a YouTuber.

They do this to scam people. - 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, nine, eight,

seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

Activation complete.

Recovery sequence initiated. (color lines beep) - Switching gears for a minute,

for the past two years,

I've experimented with placing a glitter bomb in a parked car up in San

Francisco because it's considered the car-breaking capital of the world,

and things are so bad now,

it's not even just the parked cars that are getting targeted.

They average 73 car break-ins per day, and at this point,

people have resorted to just leaving their doors wide open,

hoping the thieves can verify for themselves that there's no valuables inside,

so they won't smash the glass just to check.

And for the past two years, while we did get the glitter bombs stolen,

all we could really do was just play an alarm sound

so they throw them out- - Hell naw! -...'cause they never actually open them

in the car.

And after doing some research, it turns out there's a reason for that.

It's actually a fairly organized system called a fencing operation,

where the cards will go out in groups, and then immediately afterwards,

they'll bring it to a middleman who will pay cash in exchange for the

most valuable things they steal like laptops.

But the gut punch is

that important documents like a passport

or pictures or plane tickets don't really hold value for the thieves,

so they just get thrown in the trash.

And now that we knew they didn't plan on opening the box in the

car,

we designed the nozzles to poke through the lid,

so that even if they just threw it in the back seat,

once the proximity sensor on the bottom registered it was stolen

and the box texted us,

we could track them using the embedded GPS,

and a simple text message back would raise the camera

and activate the fart spray for two minutes straight.

So we headed up to the city

and placed our modified car box nice

and visible in the car

and commenced our stakeout.

And you can see this first black car rolls up,

and this guy gets out and spots it but doesn't take it.

And then a little while later, this beige car rolls up,

and he sees it, too, and the same thing happens.

Then not too long after that, this white car rolls up, and once again,

they clearly see the box,

but they just leave it sitting right there without even breaking a window.

And after observing all this,

our best guess was

that it was the size of the box

that was spooking them.

So we removed the heart

and all the other critical components from the large box

and placed them into a smaller box.

And while it occupied a smaller footprint,

it maintained all the same functionality of the bigger box,

while still looking like an enticing item to steal.

So the next day, we put it back out on the street,

but this time, someone came by and actually smashed the window,

only we didn't see them leave with the box.

And our working assumption was

that he just wasn't able to open the door to take it,

but when we checked the footage, it told a different story.

Not only did he once again intentionally not steal a smaller box,

but the real reason for breaking the small window was to pull the backseat

down and check the trunk,

which means if you take nothing else away from this video,

you should know putting your luggage in the trunk is not a solution to

keep it from getting stolen.

The reason they break these little windows

so often but it seems like nothing is missing is

because they're pulling down the seat to quickly check what's hidden from view in

the trunk.

And at this point, it was pretty disappointing, but we realized they'd adapted.

Word must have gotten out from stealing our glitter bombs in previous years

that a juicy-looking box like this sitting out in plain sight is nothing

but trouble. (alarm blaring)

And as an engineer,

I never claim to have all the answers,

but I know the process to get to all the answers,

and that's trying and failing and tweaking over and over again.

So while we did have a couple useless car boxes and a busted window,

we also knew their MO, which meant we now had a plan,

and that plan was to shrink the box down even further to fit it

into a backpack.

That did mean we had to make some compromises like losing the camera

and reducing the fart spray reservoir down to this improvised pouch.

But to make sure that it was still adequate,

we sprayed it on this chair,

and not only did it still last for two minutes,

but we left that chair outside to air out

and confirmed a few days later it was still in real bad shape.

So with renewed hopes, we once again hit the street,

this time with two backpacks in two separate cars parked in two different spots,

and as fate would have it,

they both got hit within about five minutes of each other. (glass shatters) (glass

shatters) Once again,

you can see they're checking the trunk.

And there's two interesting things to point out here.

Number one, if you look at the jacket on this guy

and compare it to the jacket from the previous break-in,

you can see it's the same guy, suggesting they probably work the same routes,

which means they probably recognize regularly parked cars versus a new visiting car.

So I felt especially honored

that a trained professional like this fell for our backpack,

even if it was possibly in a desperate attempt just to find a belt.

And number two, you can see just how quickly it all happens,

even breaking the glass.

The thing with tempered glass is it's really hard to break until it isn't.

And while this guy looks like Iron Man here,

just casually pushing his hand through,

what you don't see on his palm embedded in the glove is a sharp

ceramic chunk or a spike of hardened steel,

sort of like this.

And as you can see here,

if you have the right tool to concentrate the force on a really small

point,

(glass shatters) it safely crumbles to nothing almost instantly.

But more importantly than all that,

now we had both boxes registering they'd been stolen,

while we tracked them both on their embedded GPS,

watching as they made their way around,

stopping periodically to hit more cars. - We could go around,

or you could get in this car right now. - All y'all seeing

that Nissan? - Go go go.

Go go go go. - I thought that was gonna be the one, no catch.

They had two big (beep) suitcases,

and they let me steal their stuff. -

And after they each drove around for about 10 minutes,

we sent a command to commence Operation Air Freshener. (spray whirring) And unfortunately,

because we had to condense everything down so small sort of last minute,

the mic was in the same small box as the pump.

So we don't know exactly what was said,

but what we do know is that about 90 seconds after the pump started,

they tossed the whole bag from the car.

And the best part about this is that outside the backpack,

the pump and spray are actually really quiet,

so the only possible way they could have located the source is

if they sniffed their way to the answer.

And as our test showed,

they'll continue sniffing it for weeks. (color lines beeping) And in the second car,

it was a nearly identical outcome. - This is a weird (beeps) backpack.

I'm not doing it

if it's a purse 'cause God put

that to me. - Only in this case,

because the pump ran a little quieter at one point,

we got to hear them close in on the source. - What the (beeps)

is that? - What is

that? - I dunno. - What is

that?

Look at it.

I dunno what to do. - And about 20 seconds later,

their backpack (camera clatters) met the exact same fate

as the first. (color lines beep) All right,

so to wrap up, I'll just say that year over year,

we've seen a decreasing number of package steals

and a steadily increasing number of Good Samaritans.

And maybe people are becoming more considerate

or perhaps everyone just knows what a glitter bomb looks like now,

but I love the idea that at some point,

someone's package wasn't stolen

because a would-be porch pirate remembered these videos

and had second thoughts.

One thing that's not conjecture, however,

is after so many of you actively shared our video where we infiltrated

and glitter-bombed those three terrible scam call centers in India,

it got the attention of some international law enforcement agencies,

and from the press and because of your efforts,

those three centers that had each been in operation for more than a decade,

doing upwards of $20 million a year,

scamming the most vulnerable amongst us of their life savings, all got shut down,

with their top officials arrested.

So thanks to all of you for watching and caring, and of course,

thanks to these two, because without them, none of this would've ever happened.

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