Cat burglars: the victims of catalytic converter theft

Videos uploaded to YouTube of thieves stealing converters show how brazen the crooks are. A car containing the gang will pull up alongside the target vehicle, occasionally in broad daylight. One of them stands guard while an accomplice jacks it up. Another crawls underneath it to saw off the converter and, once it has been removed, his mate releases the jack and they’re gone. Around 60 seconds is all it takes.

The stolen converter may be sold to an unlicensed scrap metal dealer or to companies that openly advertise for used converters. Alternatively, it may be sold online, where prices range from £50 to £500. One major online organisation, Facebook Marketplace, told Autocar it has checks in place to identify rogue sellers and remove stolen goods from its site.

Used converters may also be sold to companies that process them for recycling. Around 150,000 used converters are scrapped each month. FJ Church is a leading UK-based processor that deals with up to 60,000 of them. The company sources converters from places such as salvage yards and breaks them open to access the ceramic honeycomb carrier to which the precious catalyst metals are bonded. It crushes the material to a fine dust before shipping it to chemical companies and converter manufacturers for separation and recycling.

Daffyd Dylan, commercial manager for catalytic converters at FJ Church, says business is booming. “China and the US are leading the demand for the material, while across the world car makers are insisting on higher levels of precious metals to avoid emissions fines. Investors have jumped in and are helping to push prices higher.”

Dylan says that last year his company began receiving offers of scrapped converters from suppliers who refused to tell them where they had got the components from. In response, the company asked for a copy of the V5 vehicle registration document relating to each unit. This became an administrative nightmare, he says, so now the company will only deal with licensed traders and refuses to pay cash: “We know there are a lot of buyers of stolen converters because increasingly they say to us ‘I can get a better price for cash elsewhere’. It’s frustrating. Local councils and the Environment Agency need to tighten up site inspections and close down rogue operators.”

On that point, BBC Radio 5 Live reported that of the 243 councils it approached in 2018, only a fraction had inspected scrap dealers. Meanwhile, in February this year, it found that 120 councils hadn’t visited or inspected any scrap dealers in the previous 28 months. Councils say they have limited resources and are asking the government to introduce greater enforcement powers.

Mark Silvester, a West Midlands Police crime prevention manager, says legislated checks on scrap dealers must be done: “Converter theft is a hard nut to crack, but tougher enforcement of scrap dealers is a good place to start. We’ve got clean air zones and our fair share of hybrids and as a result we’ve seen a rise in converter thefts.

“Many of these stolen converters surface on internet sales sites, so we’ve launched pop-up advertisements warning people about rogue parts when they’re browsing. We’ve also identified and raided over 100 chop shops where stolen cars are broken for parts. If someone calls us at 1am and tells us they’ve seen a gang cruising the streets checking out cars, we’ll dispatch an officer.”

Unfortunately for Chris King, it’s unlikely to send one as far as south-west London, where he lives. The victim of converter thieves claims he was visited by officers from the Metropolitan Police only after he wrote complaining to his local MP, the mayor of London and Dame Cressida Dick, the force’s commissioner. Lack of evidence meant the crimes were not investigated.

A spokesman for the Met Police told Autocar that the force is aware of catalytic converter thefts in King’s area and that local neighbourhood teams have run operations such as plain-clothes patrols to prevent them, as well as helping local residents understand how to secure their car’s converter.