8778 Beware..Theiving scam at Service Areas

Our friends have just fallen victim to particularly nasty thieves operating at Autostrade Service Areas, so I pass this on to alert members to it.
After a lunchtime stop travelling south from Milan towards Genova on the A7 at the weekend they returned to their car to find a note on the car windscreen alerting them that one of their tyres was flat. They were in the process of getting their spare wheel from the boot when they were approached by two smartly dressed men who offered to assist.
After replacing the wheel they then set off again on their journey. When they arrived home they realised that her handbag and all it's contents were missing, but thought that they had simply left it behind at the table in the restaurant.
It wasn't until the next morning when he took the damaged tyre to be repaired that the mechanic informed him that the tyre had in fact been cut in two places and that he had seen a recent report on T.V. about the same scan being carried out.
It may or may not be a coincidence that their car carries a foreign numberplate, but in any case we should all be awake to this scam in future.