Soaring Metal Prices Spark Crime Wave

…Soaring prices for salvaged metals, driven by a global demand in Asian markets, have turned scrap into the new gold for the sticky-fingered set, leading to spikes in an array of property crimes in the Washington area and elsewhere. Manhole covers, beer kegs, light poles, air-conditioning units and even catalytic converters — valued for the small amount of platinum they contain — have been targeted to feed a $65 billion domestic scrap-recycling industry.

On several occasions this month, thieves dug up hundreds of feet of underground copper cable used to illuminate ball fields in Anne Arundel County, forcing the organizers of a youth baseball tournament to reschedule a half-dozen games. “We got hit three times in eight days,” said Ray Fox, president of the Linthicum Ferndale Youth Athletic Association.

…Because booming economies in such nations as China and India require massive quantities of metal, the market principles of supply and demand have made metal theft far more profitable than it once was. Copper traded for $3.35 a pound in June, a more than fourfold increase over its price in 2003. Platinum traded this month at about $1,300 a troy ounce, more than twice its value five years ago — fueling the criminal appetite for catalytic converters.

Chuck Carr, a spokesman for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a trade association, said industry watchers have seen a rise in relatively large-scale, brazen thefts, such as the stealing of scrap-laden trucks. “We’ve seen situations where loaded shipping containers have been stolen,” he said.

Washington Post