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Thieves shun cars for catalytic converters

Jorge Duarte, a Car-X employee in Chicago, removes the honeycomb filter from an old catalytic converter. A thief can sell a stolen catalytic converter to a scrap yard for a couple of hundred US dollars. The honeycomb filter inside contains platinum traces. PHOTOS: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE

Jose Fernandez said he decided some time ago that on his salary as a restaurant worker, he was better off without his 1996 Toyota 4Runner. He hoped to make a nice bit of cash from its sale.

Before he could do that, though, someone beat him to extracting value: A thief sneaked under the sport utility vehicle with a battery-powered saw, slicing from the Toyota's underbelly what might be one of the most expensive small parts of the auto world: the catalytic converter, an essential emissions-control device made with small amounts of metals more precious than gold. Who knew? Fernandez didn't.

Inside the lobby of the New Windy City Mufflers and Brakes shop, Fernandez said he had heard a rumor that catalytic converters had suddenly become the rage on the black market here, but he did not believe it until his went missing on a well-lighted North Side street.

Theft of scrap metals like copper and aluminum has been common here and across the country for years, fueled by rising construction costs and the building boom in China. But now, the thieves have discovered an easy payday from the upper echelon of the periodic table. It seems there might not be an easier place to score some platinum than under the hood of a car.

"This morning I woke up and walked out, turned the key and there was a noise like this," Fernandez said, stretching his arms wide and grumbling the trainlike roar that cars make when they are missing their converters. "And now to fix it, I don't want to spend the money because it's really expensive."

The price of gold recently hit near-record highs, crossing the US$1,000-an-ounce mark before retreating a bit. Less well publicized has been the fate of the even-more-rarefied metals platinum, palladium and rhodium, with platinum hitting recent record highs of more than US$2,300 an ounce. People who might have thought their lives had nothing to do with the booming commodities market are finding out the hard way where their connection is: in their car's exhaust system.

The catalytic converter is made with trace amounts of platinum, palladium and rhodium, which speed up chemical reactions and help the converter clean emissions at extremely high temperatures.

Selling stolen converters to scrap yards or recyclers, a thief can net a couple of hundred US dollars a piece.

Exactly how much depends on the size of the car and its converter. But even a little bit is worth a lot. Converter thefts are the quickie crime du jour, not only in Chicago where workers in auto body shops and other experts say it is increasingly a nuisance, but anywhere cars are, which is to say basically everywhere.

"These are definitely occurring more than they have in recent memory and why that is definitely tied to the price of precious metals within converters," said Frank Scafidi, spokesman for the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

Replacement converters usually start around US$450. "When you start getting into the larger SUVs, it's US$1,000-plus," said Don Tommasone, owner of Village Automotive, a car care center just outside the city. "The larger the catalytic, the more platinum. That's the ones they're stealing. It's also easier to crawl underneath them. They don't need to jack up the vehicle, they just saw it right off."

Because stealing a converter does not involve actually breaking into a car, it often goes undetected. Alarms and other precautions, like parking in a well-lighted area, are scant defenses.

Last year in Minnesota, someone broke into the Ramsey Police Department's impound lot and took 19 catalytic converters off the vehicles there, a department spokeswoman said. the Star Tribune in Minneapolis ran a headline on the article about the break-in, "Thieves Show How Low They'll Go."
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