Southern California thieves are targeting cars for parts like seats and catalytic converters — but there are ways to deter them

One or more thieves crawled under Andrew Olewicz’s Prius as he was fast asleep on the evening of Sept. 26. It was parked on the street in front of his house in Costa Mesa, so he didn’t hear a thing as someone used a saw to cut out his car’s catalytic converter.

However, the god-awful noise made by the typically silent-running vehicle the next morning didn’t go unnoticed as he began an hour-long commute to San Diego. The same goes for the $500 insurance deductible he paid to get the car fixed, as well as the extra gas and hassle spent as the family rented a less fuel-efficient vehicle for about a week so he could get to work.

“For us, that’s our kids’ Christmas presents,” said Olewicz.

 

 

 

About three weeks later, the catalytic converter was stolen from his brother-in-law’s Prius, which was parked in nearby Newport Beach.

In that same time period, mechanics from Long Beach to Costa Mesa reported a spike in customers dropping off the same model of car with the same problem. Earlier, catalytic converters from Toyota Camrys were the target of choice in another spurt of similar incidents in April, said Garrett Tapper. He owns GT Collision Center, the Huntington Beach shop that worked on Olewicz’s car.

“We might not get any jobs like this for a few months,” he said. “But, when thieves hit, they hit hard.”

He, other mechanics and experts in law enforcement and the insurance industry say auto part thefts tend to occur in sporadic waves. They can take place wherever people park their vehicles and have been victimizing drivers for about as long as cars have been on the road.

Untraceable

Practically every car, truck or motorcycle is a target. If it’s not a whole vehicle, the loot might be exhaust components, third-row seats, radio and stereo systems, tires and wheels, airbags, batteries or any number of items bolted down, wired into or welded onto a car. With the right tools and about 20 minutes, criminals can turn a quick profit by taking and then hawking parts to recycling centers, chop shops or bargain hunters on online marketplaces.

Auto components are practically untraceable once they’ve been removed from a vehicle unless an owner leaves some sort of identifying mark on them, according to Investigator Rodney Tamparong of the San Bernardino County Auto Theft Task Force. He said that makes the items difficult to return to the people they belong to and nearly impossible for authorities to tell where they were stolen from.

“You’re more likely to get stopped with a whole stolen car, than stolen parts,” said Tamparong.

He said crooks can make it harder for authorities to track them down by taking apart stolen vehicles and selling them in pieces. Places where ill-gotten cars and trucks are dismantled are commonly referred to as chop shops.

These vary widely in appearance, size, and sophistication. Police classify chop shops as anything ranging from one person breaking down a stolen sedan in an open field to large warehouse operations involving a crew of thieves and dozens vehicles. But tell-tale signs, like the whir of saws and the clanking of hammers or high volumes of foot and vehicle traffic at odd hours of the night, can tip observant residents off to their presence, Tamparong said.

“Every city I come across in the county of San Bernardino will have a chop-shop or a version of a chop-shop,” he said.

‘Ideal’ infrastructure for theft

Since 2011, truck and auto accessory theft rose 10.6 percent in California, with at least 51,897 parts reported stolen in 2017, according to state statistics. Those crimes made up 8.1 percent of the 641,804 larceny thefts documented in the state by law enforcement that year.

Nationwide, thieves lifted more than 363,000 auto accessories from vehicles in 2017, according to FBI statistics. Americans also reported more than 773,000 stolen vehicles and nearly $6 billion in losses due to auto theft that year. Those figures represent a less than 1 percent increase in car, truck and motorcycle thefts over 2016, but a 10.4 percent rise since 2013.

“The infrastructure here is ideal for chopping up cars or stealing parts,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Rob Manning, a member of L.A. County’s Taskforce for Regional Autotheft Prevention.

Southern California’s vast highway system provides easy access to coastal ports, neighboring states and the U.S.-Mexico border. That makes it easier for crooks to strike distant neighborhoods, or transport stolen goods to buyers in other states and countries, said Manning.

If those goods aren’t car parts, they’re just as likely to be entire vehicles. In the past decade, the rate of auto theft in the metropolitan area encompassing San Bernardino and Riverside counties has been among the top 25 in the United States, according to the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau. Its analysis has also consistently ranked the region including Los Angeles and Orange counties as among the top 35 in the country for vehicles thefts per capita. On average, 88,000 cars, trucks or motorcycles are stolen each year in the four counties combined.

Sold for scrap

Certain parts aren’t normally bought for re-installation, and are more typically sold for scrap. Catalytic converters are commonly stolen for that purpose. Each one contains platinum or other precious metals that can be extracted and sold for a few dozen dollars, depending on their size.

Thieves got away with at least $200 worth of recyclables when they took the catalytic converter from The Youth Center’s Ford shuttle bus on Sept. 28, said the Los Alamitos nonprofit’s general manager, Julie Rubin. She had heard of these types of thefts before, but never thought crooks would have targeted a charity.

“My first thought was ‘seriously?’” said Rubin. “Who would steal from kids?”

Larger than life photos of smiling children at day camp decorate the exterior of the shuttle. The Youth Center’s name and logo, the outline of two kids silhouetted against each other in blue, are displayed all over the passenger vehicle, making it clear to a casual observer that the organization serves children. None of that deterred crooks armed with simple tools who were looking to make a quick buck.

Catalytic converters taken from most cars and trucks are smaller and worth less than those stolen from shuttles, buses and other commercial vehicles, but the value of loot can add up quickly if multiple pieces are traded in at once.

Over the years, lawmakers have implemented rules to prevent thieves from anonymously fencing stolen property at California recycling centers. State law requires recyclers that purchase large volumes of scrap to keep detailed records that include photos and driver’s license numbers of sellers. Junk buyers who fail to comply can face severe fines.

“The risk (of getting caught) might seem disproportionate to the reward, but we’re not necessarily dealing with rocket scientists in a lot of these cases,” said Frank Scafidi, a spokesman for the NICB. “Besides, when you steal something like that you don’t really have any investment to recover. So, whatever you get for it is all profit.”

Catalytic converter thefts remain common. Police and mechanics say it’s a problem they don’t expect to disappear any time soon.

“I’ve worked as an auto technician for 35 years and this sort of thing has always been a problem,” said Tim Barela, the store manager at the Midas repair shop in Huntington Beach.

Precautions to heed

Experts say simple precautions are their best advice. Lock your doors. Avoid leaving valuables inside a vehicle. Keep your automobile parked in a secure garage at night if possible. Get insured.

In addition, a market for a wide array of security devices distributed by dealers and aftermarket companies has developed over the decades to prevent vehicles and parts from being stolen. They vary in method and complexity from locking devices to GPS trackers to car alarms. Olewicz considered buying a lock that works by clamping steel cables around a catalytic converter to make it harder for thieves to cut it out.

A rare but effective option would be to weld bars to the vehicle to keep the converter in place.

“Welding bars over your catalytic converter is a little paranoid, I think, but it depends,” said Manning. “I know people who’ve had their catalytic converter stolen four or five times.”

Scafidi said these devices can succeed in make a person’s vehicle a less appealing target to thieves, but there’s no guarantee that an especially determined or brazen criminal might find some way to get around them.

“You can lock your car, roll up your windows and do all that stuff,” he said. “But, you have a nice steering wheel or an airbag or something like that, well if somebody wants that they can just break into a car and get it.”

A database solution

Rob Rollo had left his Chevy Tahoe at the parking structure adjacent to terminal one at John Wayne Airport during a two-day business trip in April. When he got back, he was surprised to find that thieves had broken into the SUV and taken his third-row seats while he was away.

“It’s long-term parking. That’s perfect,” said Manning. “They know you won’t be there for a while.”

Afterwards, the Irvine resident replaced the missing parts, made a point to secure his vehicle and even had a dealership install a special lock that bolted the seats to the SUV’s frame. So, he was beyond shocked when he returned to that same airport parking lot after a trip in August and discovered that the same part had been stolen out of his Tahoe again.

“I never thought in a million years that somebody was going to be in a parking structure with gates and cameras who would want to pull out third-row seats, which aren’t easy to lift, let alone do it twice,” he said.

Those incidents account for two out of a total of 12 vehicle break-ins reported at the airport’s parking lots between January and July of 2018, said Carrie Braun and Jamie Blashaw, spokeswomen for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Braun said there are a number of cameras and deputies monitoring the parking structures at all times. The facility is regularly patrolled by deputies stationed at the airport.

“All personnel assigned to the airport are trained to look for suspicious activity and actively patrol the airport to ensure the safety and security of the entire facility,” she said in a statement.

Rollo now hires a ride-hailing service whenever he needs to fly out of John Wayne, which is less convenient and costs considerably more than driving. It’s an imperfect solution, but Rollo just can’t abide the thought of coming back from a flight to find his SUV burglarized a third time.

As things stand, experts say not leaving a vehicle vulnerable is the only way anyone can be reasonably certain a part won’t be snatched from it while it’s unattended. But Scafidi said he believes it’s only a matter of time until all car parts are logged into a traceable database.

“There are so many ways now that you can protect a car and it’s only going to get better,” he said. “Someone would have to be a complete fool, and there will always be complete fools, but someone would have to be a complete fool to just risk stealing something knowing that it can be tracked and traced and the chances of them getting caught are pretty good.”