People Are getting Crushed to Death Stealing Cats

Most of the buyers are criminal enterprises. Catching them is no easier than catching the initial thieves. Some have already been caught, but there are more.

Which federal crime? You can't file state criminal charges in federal court.

Already done in many states, for legitimate scrap businesses. That didn't stop the thievery in a week, much of the scrap precious metal buying isn't being done by above-board buyers.

How would you put a tracking device on a cat? Inside, the temperatures will kill all electronics, if a GPS tracker could get a signal at all. Outside, the thieves will recognize the foreign object and cut or chisel it off. And the temperatures would probably still kill the electronics.

 

You're right about the temperature. So the "bait" cars would have to be towed and dropped into place rather than driven.
I think it's a Federal crime to move stolen property across state lines? Like I said, it's about incentive. Really, how many channels are there for fencing stolen platinum/component? If it's really "organized" crime then they won't be interested in 2 or 3 cats every 3 months. To get the lions' share they'd want to be centralized.

 

That isn't a federal matter until the goods actually do cross state lines. Then it also becomes a matter of demonstrating, or having probably cause, that the random collection of cats (or merely crushed ceramic matrices from inside) in their possession actually did cross state lines as stolen property. Not as simple as some readers believe.

They build their own channels, get the 'ore' shipped or smuggled overseas out of U.S. jurisdiction, then refine it before putting the purified metals back into the commercial metals stream. It often won't return to the U.S. until it is already in a new cat, maybe already factory installed in a newly imported car, maybe shipped as a new cat to an American factory.

Have you read the news stories, linked from other threads here, about the large fencing operations that have already been busted with hundreds to tens of thousands of cats?

 

But if any of these shipments were intercepted by the fuzz, the VIN’s (and/or license plate numbers) could help prosecution.

Or just bypass the car, move on to an easier target?

 

This breaks my heart.

 

GOOD!!!!

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Thank you Sir Isaac Newton!