The Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore claims the title of the nation’s leading auto export port. But a tiny percentage of those cars exported are not legal.

Federal agents in June recovered two vehicles stolen in Maryland and headed for Africa. The finds, announced Monday, brought the number of stolen vehicles recovered this year by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to six.

The federal agency nabbed 23 stolen vehicles at the port in 2007. While numbers for other U.S. ports were not immediately available, CBP officials said Baltimore’s pre-eminence as an auto exporter could lead to more incidents than other ports.

“The probability of it happening is higher than at other ports that deal with auto exports,” said CBP spokesman Steve Sapp. “Any time you have potential you have these kind of incidents that can occur.”

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On June 17, CBP officers recovered a 1999 Toyota Camry just before it was to be shipped to Niger. Two days later, officers matched a 2000 Nissan Maxima bound for Nigeria to a Maryland stolen vehicle report.

Sapp said officers run lists of vehicle identification numbers from cars shipped through the port into a database, attempting to match the numbers with police reports. Officers also occasionally inspect the cars personally to confirm the numbers, Sapp said.

Port spokesman Richard Scher said the stolen cars are a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of vehicles that pass through the port each year.

“We commend CBP, one of our key security partners, for their stellar work,” Scher said. “They are a main component to keeping our port safe.”

CBP officers also recovered a 2008 Porsche and a 2008 Hummer at the port on March 31. Both were reported stolen from Illinois and were bound for Russia, CBP said.

A Baltimore law enforcement helicopter discovered two other cars, a 2007 GMC Yukon and a 2006 Range Rover reported stolen from New Jersey, on April 3. The helicopter was flying over the port when it picked up an auto-theft device alert from a container ship, and alerted CBP officers. The cars, headed to Ghana, were recovered when the ship moored at Norfolk, Va., the next day.

Smuggling stolen cars out of the United States requires first finding a shipper willing to put their license at risk to do so — not necessarily an easy task, Sapp said.

“Ninety-nine point nine percent of importers and exporters out there aren’t going to do this,” he said. “But there are some out there who may not look closely or may have ulterior motives.”

acahall@baltimoreexaminer.com