Thieves target car part as new ‘gold rush’ in Wichita, deputy chief says

Yassine Sadkhi had a customer looking at a used truck last month at his Atlas Motors on South Broadway.

At first, the truck wouldn’t start, but when it finally did it made a loud but familiar noise. The catalytic converter had been stolen. The car lot owner said employees checked the lot and found converters missing on two other vehicles as well. He had five stolen last year and 21 have been so far this year, costing the business between $16,000 and $20,000.

“All of the businesses, in general, have suffered in a way or another with the pandemic. Dealerships are no exceptions,” he said. “It has been really tough. It’s pretty slow already and then we have to keep going with these costly repairs.”

Wichita has seen a spike in catalytic converter thefts.

So far this year, Wichita police have responded to 451 calls about stolen catalytic converters, more than the seven previous years combined. The number of calls, however, doesn’t reflect how many converters were stolen. In Sadkhi’s latest case, multiple converters were taken in that incident.

The total value reported to police is $932,541, more than the eight prior years combined.

“It’s like the gold rush,” Deputy Police Chief Jose Salcido said, “but the gold is catalytic converters right now.”

Salcido said part of the increase could be attributed to people needing to support a drug habit as well as the economic hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic. But the major cause, he said, is a state law that shifted responsibility for ensuring businesses were reporting who they purchased metals from.

“I think the ... scrap metal theft reduction act, is a great idea but I don’t think it is executed properly. They needed to probably fund a little more enforcement and oversight,” he said. “The law has no teeth.”

The lack of enforcement is why people have started to make a business out of buying converters, he said, adding that signs can be seen up and down Broadway for businesses that buy converters.

Other parts of Sedgwick County have also struggled with catalytic converter thefts.

“We still have a lot of people in this county who become victims to metal thieves,” said Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Howell, a former state legislator. “They drop out the catalytic converters and they sell these on Facebook Marketplace.”

Under state law, the Kansas Attorney General’s Office is responsible for enforcing that businesses register and report seller information to a statewide database. The problem was that the statewide database was either unfunded or suspended and the requirement for businesses to register was suspended for the last few years, according to AG spokesperson John Milburn.

“It is time for the (Kansas) Legislature to decide whether to implement a workable state-level solution or to return control to local authorities,” the AG’s Office said in a written testimony to a Kansas House committee.

The Kansas Legislature did approve changes and additional funding; the database and registration requirement started July 1, Milburn said.

However, Wichita police reported that in November they saw the highest number of calls about stolen converters since at least 2010.

Catalytic converters reduce a vehicle’s harmful emissions and contain the precious metals platinum, palladium and rhodium, giving them a scrap value of between $12 to $471, Salcido said.

He noted that someone using a battery-powered saw can steal a converter in 30 seconds. To help prevent thefts, he suggested that people to have surveillance cameras in areas where they could catch a thief, communicate with their neighbors if they see something amiss and to contact the Kansas Attorney General’s Office or their state legislator to demand change.

Barney Lehnherr, president of Transitions Group, located near downtown, wrote the AG’s office on Tuesday to say that catalytic converter thefts have cost his business more than $40,000 in the past four years.

The furniture rental company has locations in eight states in the Midwest. The locations in Kansas have had the most catalytic converters stolen, he said.

The latest thefts happened in November, when converters were stolen off of two trucks. The company was able to get one fixed but the other will sit idle since the part is on back order.

The company that performs the repairs said the back order is because of all the stolen converters, Lehnherr said.

Transitions Group has installed a barbed wire fence and plans to add other precautions to prevent future thefts, he said.

At Atlas Motors, Sadkhi said he has added $12,000 in security features in the past couple of weeks at the South Broadway lot. One was a fence to stop thieves from taking parts from vehicles in the back. He said thieves now go to the front lot that is along a busy road.

And they always wear a mask, he said.

“We’re trying to feed our families,” he said, adding it cost between $500 to $1,000 to replace each converter. “It is a hard time for everybody.”