WHAT HEELS!: Copper Thieves Steal From Munitions Plant
Copper now sells for $3 to $4 a pound, up from just 83 cents in 2000, thanks to “worldwide booms in electronics and construction,” reports The Washington Post. Consequently, copper thieves are “scaling cellphone towers, ripping off baseball field lights, looting construction sites, tearing out potentially lethal live wires, removing huge spools from utility company grounds, hauling off massive sculptures in the middle of the night and even stealing gravestone plaques.” The WaPo details one particularly heinous copper crime:
Dave Fusselman figures he has seen a lot of different items come through his family's third-generation scrap metal business in Moberly, Mo. But an attempted sale last fall broke new ground.
During separate trips, two men tried to sell Fusselman increasingly large amounts of small, copper caps they said came from a derailed train's cargo. On the third try, Fusselman got suspicious and eventually called police.
The copper turned out to be bullet casings from a munitions factory where the two men worked - enough for 1.5 million rounds of ammunition. One of the men now faces a sentence as severe as 245 years in prison for military-related theft during wartime.
States are increasing criminal penalties for thieves and for dealers who buy stolen copper, and 35 states now require copper dealers to record identification for copper sales above a certain value, according to Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), a trade group.
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