If you're going to engage in car theft or, for that matter, any illegal activity, try and be smart about it. Unlike these three car rental agency employees. According to Phoenix, Arizona affiliate ABC 15 News, three friends who worked at a car rental lot near the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport have been arrested for stealing as many as 26 vehicles, 21 of which ended up in Mexico within days after being stolen. The vehicles taken belonged to Enterprise and Hertz rental agencies. The latter is known for its Luxury and Prestige rental, such as the now-retired Corvette Z06.

Meet Rick White, 23, Tyshawnee Collins, 20, and Dwayne Cantley, 45, all now former employees of the rental agency. They allegedly worked together to allow cars without rental contracts pass through the lot's gates without scanning them, thus enabling the cars to leave the premises without being detected. The drivers of these cars have yet to be identified but it's probably only a matter of time until authorities do so.

This idea worked for a little while until the company's director of security noticed something: there were missing vehicles on the lot. A quick inventory check confirmed this and he notified the police. The trio wound up getting caught when surveillance video showed them at their assigned gates pretending to scan the vehicles as they left the grounds. OnStar connected the vehicles to the suspects.

All three have since been charged with vehicle theft. Authorities are still unsure how those 21 vehicles ended up in Mexico without getting noticed by Border Control. In any case, it was only a matter of time until this car theft operation was uncovered. Rental cars going missing without a trace typically means only one thing: they've been stolen. The suspects also assumed the surveillance footage wouldn't link them to the missing cars. They assumed wrong.