Ouch! Lock up your stuff. Scrap scavengers abound:

[rbgarr]

http://capecod.craigslist.org/boa/927436431.html

[Dave Gray]

There was a case here where a security guard to the Vollum estate (founder of Tektronix) colluded with her boyfriend and others, stealing bronze statuary to hack apart and sell to a scrap yard. She had the effrontery to commiserate with Mrs Vollum about it. They were caught by their own stupidity.

A bronze Penta outdrive is right up there as a work of art, I would say.

Then I recall hearing on the radio about someone who climbed into a power relay station and tried to cut a 20KV live line. All that was left were cinders and a greasy smear. Somewhere here in the NW.

[The Bigfella]

I hope the miserable bastards drop it on their toes.

I encountered a good case of karma about 10 years back.

I interviewed this prick of an IT manager as part of a job I was doing. All through the interview he was making a noose out of some cabling... nice! While that job was on, there was a very expensive server stolen from the building - a hole was cut in the drywall panelling from outside the secured area - in exactly the right spot to access the server.

A month later, the guy didn't show for work. When someone called by his place to check on him - he was found dead (of a heart attack), slumped over the stolen server.

[kc8pql]

It's getting bad around here too. They've been cutting through the chainlink fences around electric sub-stations and taking the copper ground wires.

[gregleeber]

"I interviewed this prick of an IT manager"

never met an IT manager that wasnt! And I've been in IT for 10 years 6 of which were at IBM.

[Wayne Jeffers]

Quite a few incidents of people being electrocuted while stripping copper wire out of empty buildings.

Most bizarre: I’ve seen a fair number of trailer homes that have been stripped of their outer aluminum skin. :eek:

I guess some people will steal anything. :(

Wayne

[Bob Cleek]

Yep, a local yacht club lost a big bronze prop, or maybe it was a bell, can't remember, from right in front of the place. It'd taken a forklift to move it.

This is a huge problem from what my cop buddies tell me. Somebody made off with the aluminum bleacher seats at the local high school, too.

So... why is this a problem? Well, the scrap dealers aren't exactly cooperative with the cops. As far as they are concerned, once somebody steals something and brings it to them... no questions asked, it's profit in their pockets. I used to like junk yard operators. Now I'm not so sure. If the scrap yards didn't buy stuff from shady people they didn't know, this wouldn't be such a big problem.

[Ron Williamson]

Scrap prices are through the floor.
Soon it will seem too much like actual work to be profitable.
R

[Thorne]

When shopping for small boat trailers, I'll admit that I had second thoughts about getting one of the really nice aluminum ones - heard reports (possibly rumor/myth) about them being stolen for the value of the aluminum...

It sounds like they are starting to crack down on the metal recyclers around here -- about time. Some abandoned houses are being scavenged for their copper pipes underneath.

[paladin]

Viet Vet friend of mine in Virginia opened a car wash.....gals in short shorts etc...did lotsa business, especially on weekends.....
He had a very large and heavy cast iron safe in the office, which could be seen through the glass windows in front of the building, right on the main drag through Alexandria south.....very early one Monday morning some idiots backed a pickup up to the door, knocked the door in and attempted to drive off with the safe by wrapping a chain around it and using a small electric winch in the back of the truck.....when he came into work the safe was sitting there in a pool of blood....the perps were nailed 3-4 days later, as one of them had his finger cut off when the safe slipped, and the finger tip was under the safe..
and the safe would not fit between the door frames...it had been brought into the building and then a wall enclosed with cement blocks..

[rddrappo]

My gf's family owns several rental properties. One of the houses was stripped of wiring recently. They actually busted open walls to get it all! For two years now we've been dealing with copper pipe and wiring being stolen off large construction sites. Even t&p valves off water heaters seem to be fair game. The prices are way down now, as Paladin said, so these guys are a little late and won't see much profit.

[62816inBerlin]

There was a spate of this in Germany earlier this year - some crooks were even stealing the cast-iron manhole covers and road drain gratings (up to 40 kg a piece). To add insult to injury, this led to a gent in S. Germany dropping the front wheel of his car in the resulting hole one night, resulting in major damage.
The scrap prices have dropped steeply since then and the authorities have tightened up the surveillance on smaller scrap dealers and I have not heard of any recent incidents.

Gernot

[Willin']

We recently had to install surveilance cameras at our transfer station because people were coming in at night to strip copper from the stockpiled refrigerators and unknowingly (or not, who knows?) releasing all the freon charges to atmosphere.

Pretty nasty toxic exposure for a few pounds of copper, but I guess it beats working for a living.

[Wayne Jeffers]

I believe Ohio very recently passed a law requiring all scrap dealers to require ID of everyone selling scrap, to record the details of each sale, and make the records available to law enforcement upon request.

I have no idea how effective it may be, or even what the level of compliance may turn out to be. Obviously, something needs to be tried.

Wayne

[pipefitter]

We had a Wellcraft Scarab at our shop with twin 225 mercury outboards on it. What the thieves didn't know is that the boat was a salvage and had been recovered from the Gulf floating upside down for days. The motors had since been sitting on the back of the boat for over a year and were seized up junk. One night, thieves broke into the yard and stole the motors. They had actually helped the owner out by removing them and ended up with junk and getting caught anyway. :D

[pipefitter]

I believe Ohio very recently passed a law requiring all scrap dealers to require ID of everyone selling scrap, to record the details of each sale, and make the records available to law enforcement upon request.

I have no idea how effective it may be, or even what the level of compliance may turn out to be. Obviously, something needs to be tried.

Wayne

There is a scrap yard across from our shop. One day I heard a loud noise and walked out front to see a scrap trailer on top of our mailbox. Thieves had been stealing copper rough ins from new construction and the scrap yard called the cops. When the cops arrived, the scrappers tried to flee and the trailer had come loose from the truck in the process. Some scrap yards do cooperate with police. The cop told us there was 30-40k worth of copper on that trailer, not in scrap value but as it was stolen as building material and the thieves would be charged with it's usage value, not the scrap price.

[Jay Greer]

When my father was in college, he posed for the statue of the miner that stood for some eighty years in front of the Carthay Circle Theater in Hollywood CA.
Last summer, thiefs sawed him off at the boots and took the bronze statue to a scrap yard where they paid the equivalent of one cent on the true dollar value of the bronze work. Fortunatly, the sculpture was recovered before it could be melted down. There is no honor amoung thieves!
Jay

[rddrappo]

California had a law earlier this year that required scrap yards to record as much info as possible, and you didn't get paid right away, but had to wait some certain amount of time for a check to be mailed. Not sure of the particulars, but some lawsuit ended that. Now we're back to being ripped off. Dope fiends don't like to wait for their drug money to be mailed to them before they can get their next fix.

[Bob Adams]

Around here, they are stealing aluminum light poles!

[Eric D]

here in WI, I just took in some scrap to my local yard. It was an old hitch for a van that we no longer want to tow things with since I bought a new truck and didn't want the hitch scraping on the steep driveway approach.

Anyhow, Picture ID required, then a quick photo scan of your mug, license plates coming and going along with the WEIGHT of your vehicle all being instantly put into the computer and spit out on a paper that you then have to initial an verify this/that and the next...all for a few measely bucks. Took me about 3 minutes. They said they have been doing it for years to stay ahead of the crooks, and mumbled something about lowering their insurance rates and keeping the cops on the streets and not in their yard.

I was impressed to say the least...