Police in Fremont announced on Monday that a year-long investigation into a local recycling center has allegedly yielded stolen catalytic converter material and pallets containing at least 300 suspected stolen converters, the department said.
Arrow Recovery, located in the 46000 block of Warm Springs Boulevard in Fremont, was the subject of a sting operation where an undercover officer allegedly sold cut catalytic converters to the business which were etched or marked as stolen. Detectives allege that over a several month operation, Arrow Recovery “repeatedly” purchased stolen converters from undercover officers.
In June of this year, Fremont Police obtained a search warrant at the business where they allege they found “multiple” 55-gallon drums of refined and semi-refined catalytic converter material along with 300 suspected stolen converters.
Police said the goal of the sting was to shut down a “major pathway” for criminals to sell stolen converters.
Currently, detectives are seeing if they can match converters to people who reported theirs stolen; however, due to the condition of most of them, “it is generally not possible to confirm the origin” of many of the recovered items, police said.
Police claim that the city of Fremont has seen a drop in converter thefts over the last few months, which they say corresponds with their investigation.
The operation was a collaboration with the Fremont Fire Department, Silicon Valley Regional Computer Forensics Lab and the State Toxic and Hazardous Waste Department and is still active.
FPD is now working with the district attorney to prosecute Arrow Recovery.
Hooray!
Caught them red handed stealing neighbors cat couple months ago 11:30 am on a Saturday cops were shocked too. Prob was Mexican neighbors got 12 people in one house sorry yea your cars are attracting crime not sorry for them. Got a cat lock for mine
This is great news!
Just last week couple guys tried stealing someones CAT in our neighborhood and it was right in front of his place and it was pretty loud so they were able to chase them away before they got it. BTW this was on Mullberry drive and Landana so if you hear some loud machine sound outside that’s what it probably is.
Am I the only one who looks at 1 year investigation and 300+ converters to say couldn’t this have been solved sooner? Going after the recycler is one thing but the people stealing the converters are still out there stealing. Of course even if caught they would be out within hours so what’s the point of arresting them.
Thieves stole my sons truck and cut all 3 cats off it 3 weeks ago. Maybe this is where they ended up?
Good job LE! …. now we all know that’s just the tip of the iceberg… we need about 10 more of these busts to really send the message to the perps
In the building process why aren’t vehicle manufacturers required to make them much more difficult to steal?
Pat.
Run for office. I’ll vote for you.
On second thought. That’s a way to practical suggestion.
Ha!
Because it’s really not the car manufacturer’s responsibility to make cars that thieves can’t saw parts off of.
How about if thieves were actually locked up for a while, so they would have time to think about the errors of their ways?
At my old work, thieves would steel SS bars. After we got a police report we went down the road and got them back from the recycler, Why did he keep paying for them? It’s not like we paid him. Why didn’t the police do anything about it? Why didn’t we raise the issue to get control of this. Not to mention insurance just kept paying our claims.
Awesome job FPD – thank you for your hard work and determination to investigate this. @b2b, it’s easy to question why something takes time when you’ve never done the job, it’s not as cut and dry as it may seem. Cutting off the ease and source of pymt will hopefully lower the desire to steal them. We have to start somewhere.
Another SBA PPP x2 recipient, crooked. the usual suspects.
Throw the book at them, these people are responsible for the scourge we’ve had to live with for years.
I hope we find out what they do. So many of these stories get lost.
If they had this operation under investigation for a year then they must have all the info on the thieves. Like where they sleep and what they eat and who their girlfriends are.
“Hang ’em High”
Almost the same. I can’t understand why businesses in Oakland don’t have motion detectors in their buildings connected to an alarm company. If I owned a jewelry store I would have everything connected to a high voltage shocker. You grab that necklace you are going to be on the floor wiggling all over the place. Something has to be done to stop these thieves. Everynight on the news is a new one. It is depressing that nothing is getting better.
So jewelry stores keep their doors locked until a customer shows up. A customer shows up and the door unlocks. The customer holds the door open for the thieves and holds it open the whole time of the robbery so they can’t get locked in.
They need a vestibule where the inner door won’t unlock until the outer door is closed. It can also be used to hold robbers until police arrive.
So criminals of CoCo county who stole catalytic converters drove all the way to Fremont to sell them ? ? ? ?
SA
… I’m sure there are plenty more CC perps out there – from all over .. that’s just one
If these midnight mechanics had any measurable IQ I’m sure they already knew where to sell them with no questions asked.
The robbers should face some frontier justice with a thorough beating, as a future deterrent of course.
Without cash bail, do they really need to go to court? I mean, what’s going to happen if they don’t?
So just how many catalytic converters did the cops steal in order to perform this “sting” operation? LOL