CATALYTIC CONVERTER

THERE'S AN ARMY OF THIEVES COMING FOR YOUR

- DYLAN TAYLOR-LEHMAN

JEFFERSONTOWN, KENTUCKY NOVEMBER 2021

The suspects had stashed the van inside a residential garage on Southside Drive in this suburb just outside Louisville. At 4 a.m., officers from the Jeffersontown Police Department burst onto the property, raided the garage, and opened the van’s back doors. There, they found their mark: almost 200 catalytic converters, a tangle of rusty parts with hacksaw marks where each had been cut from a vehicle. It seemed the homeowner was fencing stolen catalytic converters, paying thieves for the parts, then selling them to a processor who extracted the precious metals inside. One catalytic converter (or “autocat,” to gearheads) can net a thief more than $100, while the broker buying the parts could sell each one to a recycler for up to $500.

And it’s pretty easy money: Removing a catalytic converter can take less than a minute, involving little more than a thief slipping under a car and making two cuts with a Sawzall.

The day before the Jeffersontown raid, police had caught a man on camera stealing a catalytic converter in a hotel parking lot. That man went directly to the house on Southside Drive, not even bothering to change the clothes that easily identified him.

Police ultimately arrested him, as well as the homeowner and his wife, mother-in-law, and twin brothers. All face charges of trafficking in stolen auto parts. According to Jeffersontown Police Chief Rick Sanders, crude but “meticulous” records recovered in the raid suggested the hustle had made the family $180,000 in four months.

“[The raid] is a significant event,” Sanders said at a press conference a few days later. “We consider these to be high-level violators who are responsible for hundreds of catalytic converters that have been stolen throughout Jefferson County.” That year alone, Louisville Police reported 1,340 of the stolen parts by October 20, almost 10 percent of the entire nation’s 2020 total.