“Once you add in the money we have to spend to replace them,” White said, “these thefts have cost us well over $100,000. They’ve just about put us out of business, but we’re still going.”

White buys wrecked vehicles and rebuilds them, then sales them as rebuilt models. He said he can’t understand how some scrap metal dealers can buy stolen goods.

“When somebody comes in with a truckload of this stuff, they have to know it’s stolen,” he said. “A legitimate dealer doesn’t haul that much metal around. You’d have to be stupid not to know it’s stolen.”

White’s business has been hit several times and there was an arrest made in one case, but he hasn’t gotten any payback for what was taken.

“They didn’t do anything to them,” he said. “They live right down from us and they would just come in at night and take what they wanted.”

The new law, which comes from the Department of Commerce and Insurance, “requires registration of dealers buying and selling scrap metal by October 1, 2008; prohibits immediate payment for purchase of copper, catalytic converters, and air conditioner evaporator coils; establishes criminal penalties and civil forfeitures for violation of act.”

“They’ll take anything,” White said, “but they really like the Toyota trucks. Not only are they easy to get under, but the converters have more platinum in them, meaning you can get more money when you sell them.”

Vonore Police Chief John Hines said he expects the new law to make a difference.

“It’s been a large problem for us,” Hines said. “But I’m very happy to hear about the new legislation. It’s very similar to the meth law in that people who deal in these metals are tracked and if anything looks out of the ordinary we’ll know about it.

“The price of precious metal has really driven this market,” Hines added. “And this metal can be hard to follow. You can figure out where an engine came from by its vehicle identification number, but these parts don’t have any numbers on them.”

It isn’t that hard for the thieves to take the converters, White and Hines both said.

“You take a battery powered saw,” Hines said, “and slide up under that truck and 20 seconds later you’ve got something you can sell for $150.”

As for the scrap metal places that are buying the stolen metal, Madisonville Police Chief Gregg Breeden said it can be hard to tie people to the crime.

“We actually went to a dealer in another town, and saw some metal we knew had been stolen from Madisonville, but there was no way to prove where it came from,” Breeden said. “Hopefully this law, which says a dealer has to hold the metal for five days before he can pay the seller, will give us time to find where it came from.”

White said he hopes the law kills the market for the metal, especially the catalytic converters.

“If they have no where to sell it,” he said. “they wouldn’t steal it. It’d be useless to them.”

michael.thomason@advocate anddemocrat.com | 442-4575.