Who steals from Boys & Girls Clubs? Catalytic converter thieves are everywhere

One morning this month, while doing a test run, drivers noticed an odd noise coming from the white and blue buses that Boys & Girls Clubs of Tampa Bay uses to carry children on field trips.

The drivers soon discovered that each of the four buses was missing its catalytic converter, the metal box attached to the bottom of a vehicle to help reduce exhaust emissions.

The theft would cost the Boys & Girls Clubs nearly $6,000. Even worse, said Vice President of Operations Keith Harris: Sending the buses off for repair threatened to delay field trips that would have been the kids’ first in over a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s not like you can mistake it for just another commercial vehicle,” Harris said. “It just broke my heart to know that someone wouldn’t have ... the wherewithal to see it within themselves to say, ‘Well, maybe stealing from kids is not the right thing to do.’”

Stealing from the Boys & Girls Clubs may be the meanest example of a crime trend sweeping the Tampa Bay area and the nation. In 2019, 3,389 catalytic converter thefts were reported in the United States, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. In 2020, that number jumped to 14,433.

In the past three months, the Tampa Police Department has received about 30 reports of catalytic converters stolen from vehicles, said Officer Gregory Noble. It’s a trend agencies are seeing across Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, as well.

The metal boxes are popular among thieves, in part, because they contain palladium — a precious metal worth about $2,700 per ounce these days. By comparison, an ounce of gold is worth around $1,800 per ounce. The devices also contain valuable platinum and rhodium.

A few years ago, a stolen catalytic converter sold for about $70 to $100, Noble said. Today, they could go for $1,000, though the market fluctuates with the price of metals.

At the other end of the price scale, they’re also valuable as scrap metal because they’re so easy to remove. Grab a saw, crawl under a car and they’re off in a minute or two.

“It’s a crime of opportunity, really, and the market is just ...unbelievable,” Noble said. “By the time someone calls 911, they’re gone.”

Catalytic converters became mandatory in 1975 to meet new federal emission standards, according to the Science History Institute. Most cars have one catalytic converter, but some larger vehicles have more.

Steps have been taken through the years to stem the theft of the devices. They’re a restricted and regulated item, meaning whoever tries to sell them must provide proof of ownership or evidence showing they’re in a related business — a mechanic shop, for example, Noble said.

In Florida, a secondary metals recycler — a registered business at a fixed location buying secondhand metal — must collect information from any seller of regulated metal and keep that information for at least three years. The information includes identification, the date and time of the transaction, a signed statement saying the seller is the owner of the regulated metal and more.

The recycler must send records of the transaction to law enforcement by 10 a.m. the following day.

People buying and selling catalytic converters online make it more difficult to pin down stolen goods.

“It’s coming from all angles, where we’re trying to stop the thieves on the street from stealing them and we’re trying to stop the unlicensed secondary metals recyclers from buying them,” Noble said. “And we’re also trying to stop the people ... selling them over the internet.”

One example was the arrest by Tampa police May 13 of two men who paid $23,520 cash in a deal involving about 36 catalytic converters that police say were stolen. Cash cannot be used in transactions involving restricted regulated metals. In another recent case, Tampa police shut down a local business that received half a million dollars in what they say were stolen catalytic converters.

One way to prevent theft is to keep your car in a locked garage, officer Noble said. If you can’t, keep the car in a well-lit area, preferably near a security camera. There are also products like the Catstrap that can make it more difficult to saw off a catalytic converter and the Cateye alarm that detects motion near the device.

Vehicles most often targeted include the Toyota Prius and Honda Element, Noble said, or any high-performance-engine car whose catalytic converter contains lots of precious metals. Isuzu box trucks and large delivery trucks are popular targets, too, because they often have two of the devices.

What if your catalytic converter is stolen? Expect to pay $1,200 to $1,800 to replace one on a Prius, for example, barring any other damage to the car, said Jamil Santiago with Toyota of Tampa Bay. And insurance only covers the loss if you carry the more expensive comprehensive coverage, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Not to mention your deductible.

Most thefts are occurring where vehicles are stored for a length of time — like the buses operated by the Boys & Girls Clubs, which sat for days between the end of school and the start of camp at the group’s metro administration office, 1307 N. MacDill Ave.

“We have a lot of fleet vehicles and they’re parked in an overnight lot or over the weekend,” Noble said. “They’re hitting daycare centers ... because they know their vans and buses aren’t being used at night. But they’re also going into people’s driveways with vehicles parked right next to their house.”

A few weeks ago, he said, Tampa police arrested a young man caught taking a catalytic converter off of the owner’s truck at noon.

Insurance did not cover the cost of the four catalytic converters stolen June 7 from the Boys & Girls Clubs. Still, the repairs got done — luckily, before the first summer camps were scheduled to start. There have been no arrests yet in the case.

“It’s been a year and half now that our children have had their world turned upside down,” clubs vice president Harris said. “So that’s what really was heartbreaking for us is, this was our opportunity to get them out on field trips again, and then somebody just ... put a damper on that.”