The copper theft epidemic

Attention has been drawn to this ever since the movie Collapse came out. I'm sure this is widespread in New Zealand – it simply isn't being reported.

Copper theft: a worldwide, and sometimes lethal, epidemic

MacLeans.ca,

29 March, 2013

Note: column height indicates the number of hits produced when performing a news search for the term “copper theft." Source: Factiva.

What killed Thelma Morrow?

At first glance, the answer seems obvious and not all that unusual. On the night of September 7, 2011, a carstruck the 52-year old Miami woman as she crossed the road.

It’s tragic, but pedestrian-car accidents happen all the time.

Yet something about Morrow’s death was different, and it had nothing to do with Morrow, the driver, or weather conditions.

As a local news outlet reported at the time, “A 30-block stretch of road was unlit because copper wiring had been stolen from the street lights, rendering them inoperable.”

Emergency personnel at the scene were convinced the dimly-lit street made the unfortunate difference.

“We all feel if the street lights were on, she wouldn’t be fighting for her life,” an official with the Miami Fire Rescue was quoted as saying.

Thelma Morrow was killed by copper theft.

 

The epidemic 

Whoever stole the copper wiring that led to the death of a Miami woman is not alone. Over the last several years, the number of copper thefts has exploded.

Thieves have targeted countless items containing the metal: air conditioners, bronze statues, and wire from railway lines. A favourite among criminals are empty, foreclosed homes in the post-housing meltdown U.S. Unlike common burglars, they do not look for cash, jewellery or electronics: they break and enter because the average single-family home contains over 400 pounds of copper, according to the Copper Development Association, an industry-supported group.

The looters risk, and sometimes lose their lives in the course of heists: many have been electrocuted, often after cutting live cables in electrical substations. And, as the Morrow case illustrates, they often endanger others as well. According to the FBI:

Copper thieves are threatening US critical infrastructure by targeting electrical sub-stations, cellular towers, telephone land lines, railroads, water wells, construction sites, and vacant homes for lucrative profits. The theft of copper from these targets disrupts the flow of electricity, telecommunications, transportation, water supply, heating, and security and emergency services and presents a risk to both public safety and national security.

It’s a worldwide phenomenon: in Britain, police warned in February 2011 that, “cable theft [was] the next biggest priority after the terrorist threat.”

Canada hasn’t been spared either. Back in 2008, Toronto Police had a dedicated cop on the copper theft beat. Calgary recently established its own special unit to combat the problem. Last year, 7 people were arrested after allegedly stealing copper from a Hydro-One facility in Etobicoke. They were lucky: in anotheralleged attempt to steal copper from a Hydro-Quebec property a man lost his life in 2011.

 

The culprit, part 1

The reason for these brazen thefts is rather simple: price.

As the following chart indicates, the price of copper started climbing in the early 2000s and has been at unprecedented heights ever since. It’s a fantastic opportunity for a thief: all you have to do is steal the stuff and sell it to a scrap metal dealer — and because it’s very difficult to prove which scrap was legally obtained and which was stolen, you really have to be busted in the act in order to get into trouble.

But why are copper prices so high?

The standard answer goes as follows: copper prices are high because fast-growing emerging economies, especially China and India, need lots of it to build infrastructure. They’ve pushed world demand higher and prices have followed.

Copper theft in places like the U.S. and Canada, then, would seem to be a bizarre side-effect of economic development in far-flung corners of the world.

In other words, Toronto Police can put a dedicated cop on the copper theft beat for a couple years, as they did, but they’re really playing a metallic version of whack-a-mole. It is eminently futile. As long as the price is high, there will be motivated thieves.

 

The culprit, part 2

Last May, Maclean’s published a Bank of Canada memo on speculation in commodities obtained under Access to Information legislation. According to that document,

“In December 2010, the [London Metals Exchange] reported that a single trader held up to 90% of the metal in LME warehouses, a position worth about 3bln and equal to about 50% of the exchange-registered supply of copper in the world…Copper traded to what at the time was record highs.”

The Bank of Canada’s analyst was right, but story is more complicated still.

Huge amounts of copper have been flowing into China for years, but there’s mounting evidence that a significant part of it isn’t going into building infrastructure — it’s merely stockpiled. It’s hard to come up with precise estimates of exactly how much copper lies piled up in China but we have some hints, provided by intrepid financial analysts who’ve taken to traveling the country taking pictures of the stocked-up metal.One photo, taken by Standard Chartered and first noted by FT Alphaville, shows copper being stored in a parking lot because the warehouse was filled to the brim:

And these hoards aren’t showing up in most published estimates of worldwide inventories, the kind of statistics the Bank of Canada was looking into at the London Metals Exchange and that analysts use to gauge how much of a supply buffer exists for industrial metals.

If all you looked at was the LME stockpile, copper supply would indeed appear reasonably tight: inventories have climbed significantly as of late but still only total about 500,000 tonnes, compared to annual estimated demand of over 18 million tonnes. However, as the BBC revealed a couple of years ago, there are also large tonnages of copper that are stored in LME-approved warehouses but not reported to the exchange. Second, almost all of the metal being stored in China is not captured in the data on worldwide inventories.

According to regulatory filings by investment bank JP Morgan and Blackrock, the world’s largest money manager, there are between 2.5 and 2.8 million tonnes of copper held outside the LME warehouse system. These estimates of so-called “hidden stocks” suggest the market is very well-supplied, contrary to conventional wisdom.

In China, some reports indicate that local firms who cannot get conventional loans from banks are able to import copper and use the collateral as proceeds in order to borrow. Other observers suggest certain market players are squirreling away inventory to keep the market tight.

The market may soon be subject to yet more stockpiling: JP Morgan and Blackrock, for their part, have proposed two copper Exchange Traded Funds, securities whose sole purpose would be to buy and store physical copper for investment purposes.

Regardless of where exactly the metal is being stashed away and who is behind it, this much seems clear: the reason why Thelma Morrow died isn’t a worldwide shortage of copper — it’s a massive amount of hoarding. And until it stops, the theft will go on.

Metal theft in Britain

Metal theft payouts costing insurers '£1m a week'

Insurers are paying out more than £1m a week to victims of metal theft, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has claimed.

BBC,

21 May, 2012

The group said UK metal theft had doubled in the past five years to about 1,000 reported incidents a week.

The disruption the crime causes costs the UK economy about £770m a year.
The ABI said metal theft was an "ever-present threat" and it will meet the government and British Transport Police on Tuesday to debate the issue.


Nick Starling, the ABI's director of general insurance, said: "Metal thieves are putting lives at risk, causing expensive damage and massive disruption.


"This is why we are working with the Government to crack down on metal thefts".

Tougher penalties

Continue reading the main story

Metal theft: The 'ever-present threat'

Every week:

• About 1,000 metal thefts occur - double the number of five years ago
• The UK economy loses £15m in replacing stolen metal, compensating victims and disruption
• Train services are delayed by 117 hours after cable thefts
• 23 churches are attacked
  

Example of recent thefts:

• A £500,000 sculpture was stolen by suspected scrap metal thieves from a park in south London
• Operations at Hertfordshire Police headquarters were disrupted following an attempted metal theft
• Thieves stole a train with two trucks of scrap metal, driving it down the line and emptying the metal into lorries at the trackside
  

The association - which speaks on behalf of the insurance industry - said 300 tonnes of metal was stolen per week, which is the equivalent of 300 cars.
Mr Starling said the ABI supports Government action which will make it harder to sell on stolen metal and tougher penalties for offenders.


The Home Office could create a register for scrap dealers - and cash payments could be banned - to make metal transactions easier to trace.


The metal recycling industry is worth £5.6bn and employs 8,000 people in the UK.
Mr Starling said: "From delayed train journeys to loss of telephone and internet connections, to damaged churches, most people are affected by this crime.


"Insurers have a key role to play, not only compensating those insured but in helping their customers take sensible security measures to reduce this ever-present threat."


There have been growing calls for action among the railway industry because the copper used in railway cabling has a high scrap value.
Nearly four million passengers had their train journeys disrupted in 2011, at a cost of more than £16m.


Last week, thieves stole an A3-sized metal plaque erected to commemorate the deaths of two young boys, killed in an IRA bomb attack in Warrington, Cheshire, in 1993.


One of the boy's fathers described the action as "soulless, heartless and very offensive". It is thought the plaque is worth no more than £30.


Elsewhere, drain covers in Birmingham are now forensically marked after nearly 1,000 were stolen in the last six months of last year.


West Midlands Police told the BBC in February metal theft was having a "significant impact" in the region.


A village near Chester suffered a communications blackout affecting homes, schools and the doctor's surgery after thieves stole underground telecom cables.

Infrastructure scavenging

This is but one example of a phenomenon that goes on every day throughout the word – the theft of copper causing huge problems

Copper thieves keep people, drivers in dark

Las Vegas Review Journal,

15 April, 2012

Some people enjoy stealing another's thunder. Others apparently take joy in taking people's light.

Government entities in Southern Nevada for years have been battling copper thieves who steal the wiring from street lights, darkening our neighborhoods and freeways.

You can't help but wonder whether the outages on long stretches of roadways have contributed at all to the rash of pedestrian deaths in recent months.

It's tough to say whether there is a connection between poorly lit streets and vehicle vs. pedestrian accidents. What isn't so tough to say is the impact the epidemic has had on government agencies whose coffers have already been pinched by the sour economy.

Consider this: In just the last six months, copper wiring has been stripped from 12 street lights and seven trail lights in Henderson. While the city is quick to repair the lights -- most of the time they are repaired in less than three days -- the crime is costly. In six months, the city has forked out $20,000 to return light to its streets.

Kathleen Richards, spokeswoman for Henderson, said residents sometimes see thieves lifting the copper wire, but assume they are city employees repairing the lights.

It has become such a major issue Richards urges people to call 911 and reminds them that city workers will be wearing uniforms.

The value of copper fluctuates and the number of thefts typically follow along that pattern, Clark County spokesman Dan Kulin said.

"The severity of the problem seems to rise and fall depending on what folks get for the material," Kulin said.

Prices vary. Recycling centers pay around $25 a pound for die cast copper; scraps from electrical devices are worth about $10 a pound, according to the website Benefits-of-Recycling.

During the last legislative session, lawmakers agreed to crack down on thefts by requiring salvaging and recycling centers to log the names of those delivering the metal to their yards.

Clark County has taken steps to prevent the thefts too. Caps to utility boxes are welded or locked. If the boxes are on the ground, crews try to bury them. If they are on the street light poles, they are placed as high as possible.

When copper values were at the highest, in 2008 to 2009, Kulin said 480,760 feet of the metal wiring was stolen from street lights. So far this year, 37,700 feet of wiring was stolen, amounting to $39,000 in repair costs. In 2011, 166,900 feet of wiring was lifted, costing taxpayers $115,000.

Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Dennis Flynn said the problem has plagued the Las Vegas Valley for years and, although law enforcement agencies have made arrests, the thefts continue to be a problem.

"This has been an ongoing issue we've dealt with for the last three years, but it's definitely on the increase," he said. "It's such an inconvenience to everybody and it's just disgusting. The money they get from the theft is such a small amount compared to what it costs to do the repairs."

Flynn said he has not noted a correlation between pedestrians struck by vehicles and street lights. When officers see a malfunctioning light, they contact the government entity immediately.

Crews are quick to fix the lights, except on Interstate 215, where county officials say the work must be contracted out.

"This problem is it's dangerous," Flynn said of the darkened lights. "It puts people in danger, and it is an inconvenience to people who live or pass through the area. It also comes out of taxpayers' money. We pay for that crime."

Southern Nevada is not the only region dealing with the thieves. Sacramento city officials just last week approved spending $2 million to repair their street lights. That is on top of the $1.2 million spent in 2010, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Police have warned recycling centers and salvaging yards that their employees could face prosecution and their business license could be stripped if they knowingly accept copper wiring that has been stolen.

He said some thieves have become so desperate they are stealing storm drain covers and manhole covers.

"Since the economy turned, this has been on a steady rise," he said.

The police department has made headway in capturing criminals stealing residents' lights.

"All reports we generate go into a database like any other crime," Flynn said. "It's a searchable database where we can see where they're occurring. If there is any type of pattern, our investigators set up accordingly."

If you see someone fiddling with a street light, it's probably worth taking a second look to see whether they're a government worker. It could save us all a few dollars.

Copper theft and other crime

This is an integral part of collapse.

We have had our own local theft of copper - in Lower Hutt, New Zealand “thieves posed as tradesmen and made out to tenants in the Housing NZ apartment blocks where they ripped out and stole copper piping, that it was ‘all good’, they were meant to be there and not to worry about the noise!”  


It is going on all the time, but it is hard to find reference to it in the New Zealand media

Massive leap in US metal theft claims

Recycling National,

March 23, 2012 

United States: Metal theft insurance claims increased by more than 80% in the USA when comparing figures for 2009-11 with those for the preceding three years - with some 25 083 claims lodged as compared to 13 861 in 2006-08, it is confirmed in a report from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB).

The document reveals that in excess of 96% of the insurance claims related to thefts of copper. In addition to the frequency, it emerges from the NICB report that the severity of the thefts has also increased.

Due to this, traffic controls at many busy intersections have been rendered inoperative and numerous highways have been plunged into darkness. Even the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reacted to this crime wave, stating publicly: ‘Copper thieves are threatening US critical infrastructure and present a risk to both public safety and national security.’

ANZ Bank says it is still trying to find out how much money hundreds of customers have lost in an ATM scam.

Radio New Zealand,

26 March 2012

ANZ Bank says it is still trying to find out how much money hundreds of customers have lost in an ATM scam.

It says fraudsters attached equipment to four machines in Auckland to read information on customers' cards, in a practice known as skimming.

ANZ National Bank says scammers are constantly updating their tactics to try to keep ahead of ATM security.

ANZ managing director of retail Kerri Thompson says an investigation is underway and the bank is checking all its machines to insure no others have been targeted.

Ms Thompson says while the bank cannot confirm how many people have been affected, it can say it is in the hundreds.

She says the amount of money stolen is unknown at this stage.

Ms Thompson says those who have lost money will be reimbursed.

She say the bank is contacting customers as more information comes to light.

UK: Infrastructure theft

This is not a one-off.  This is going on all the time - copper is valuable

Cable theft leaves phones cut off for a second week

More than 100 people are facing another week without telephone lines and the internet after thieves stole half a mile of cable from an East Yorkshire village.

BBC, 

20 February, 2012

BT customers living in Tickton near Beverley lost their connection after the theft on 9 February.

Some local businesses said the disruption was affecting trade.

BT said it hoped to complete the restoration of the service by Friday at the latest.

The Tickton Grange Hotel claimed the lack of internet and phone access was disrupting its business.

Manager Paul Whyman said: "We have a direct booking system, for example, which is internet based.

"Nowadays people like to look on the internet, see the hotel, see we are a nice place in beautiful East Yorkshire and press the button.

"They can't do that at the moment, so we are missing very important business."

BT said 800m (2,625 ft) of cable was stolen and just under 2,000m (6,562 ft) left severely damaged and in need of replacement.

The company said it had reconnected some people but that work had been halted while temporary traffic lights were installed

Increased instances of copper theft in New Zealand

CollapseNet has recently being reporting on the increased incidence of crime such as copper theft and cargo hysts as indicators of social and economic collapse in the United States.

There have been examples of similar things occuring here; one suspects that occurances exceed reports.

Thieves brave 220k volts for copper

Brazen but brainless thieves have risked their lives by breaking into a Manawatu wind farm switch yard in an apparent attempt to steal copper wire.

Thirty-one turbines were shut down at TrustPower's Tararua wind farm about 2am yesterday after thieves cut through a wire fence, drained transformer coolant oil and dug up copper wire bands. The loss of coolant triggered alarms which shut the turbines down.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/theft/news/article.cfm?c_id=344&objectid=10666767


Another example is in this item from TV1.

As increasing numbers of people choose to disengage from the system one can expend to see crimes of this nature increase.

Aggravated robbery a targeted attack

Police say an aggravated robbery in Upper Hutt last night was a targeted attack.

Three men held an elderly Silverstream couple at gunpoint at around 6pm, demanding cash and gold.

They made off with over $50,000 in banknotes.

Upper Hutt Area Commander Inspector Mike Hill says police are currently investigating who knew the couple kept a safe in their home.

He says the offenders won't be able to keep such a large sum of money quiet, and anyone who hears talk of the robbery should contact police immediately.

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/9672383/aggravated-robbery-a-targeted-attack/