Copper: The new underground currency

Copper is the new underground currency. Its price has soared to more than $3 a pound, making it a worthwhile target of both novice scavengers and highly organized rings that hit several houses a day, pulling in as much as $20,000 a month. No longer just a nuisance, copper thieves are ransacking neighborhoods and often staying one step ahead of police.

It's an international problem with local repercussions. From the theft of large copper statues in England, to millions of dollars of missing copper in post-Katrina New Orleans, to a $300,000 copper heist from the irrigation system of an Arizona farm, the thieves have caused financial havoc.

In Minnesota, scavengers have dismembered a copper-coated Buddha, stolen statues from Theodore Wirth Park, snatched plates off of graves and stripped warehouses and construction sites of tens of thousands of dollars worth of the precious metal.

Foreclosure ripples: Copper theft, illegal house parties, garage prostitution!

minnesotamonitor.com

Mon Apr 14

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