Rogue tow truck drivers steal cars, sell them for scrap

Rogue drivers steal, sell vehicles

Leila Atassi
Plain Dealer Reporter

On a cold, soggy fall morning, a tow truck driver hauling a beat-up 1988 Mazda RX-7 steered slowly through the muddy entrance of a scrap yard on Cleveland's East Side.

A security guard who never left the warmth of the cab of his pickup truck glanced up from a crossword puzzle and nodded in recognition at the driver. The young man behind the wheel stopped the truck on a platform to weigh his cargo, and pulled from the console a tattered car title - for a 1992 Pontiac Bonneville.

He slid the document - one he says he has copied and used many times before - into a drop-box, fulfilling the state law requiring a title with every scrapped car. He hauled the Mazda to the back of the lot, unhinged it near the scrap yard's car crusher and returned to the gate to await his payment - $250 in cash.

City officials reversed course in October and told police to resume enforcing the local rules. Officials did not return calls for comment on the reason why it was lifted.

LeSuer said the directive had frustrated her investigative team, which already was spread thin across scores of scrap yards in the city.

"Our hands were tied for almost a year," LeSuer said. "Anything that helps make this job a bit easier is a great thing. This ban took away a tool our officers could use to investigate something they believed looked suspicious. It goes a lot deeper than just one silly ordinance you can't enforce."

People running legitimate towing businesses say the thieves have tarnished the industry. The rogues often operate without the proper licenses and equipment.

The PUCO, which regulates for-hire tow truck operations, frequently audits those who play by the rules and are properly registered, said Don Mesaros, president of the Towing and Recovery Association of Ohio. Meanwhile, thieves operate unchecked, undermining the integrity of the profession, he said.

In recent years, the towing association has included in its newsletters forms for members to report all kinds of unscrupulous business practices, Mesaros said. The association forwards the complaints to the PUCO.

To scrap a car in Ohio, it must be accompanied by the vehicle's title. Within 10 days of receiving the car, a scrap metal processor must mark the title "To Be Canceled" and forward it to the clerk of court who issued it. The clerk then notifies the registrar of the cancellation, and the scrap metal dealer must keep a copy of the canceled title on file for three years.

If the seller of the scrap car is not the titled owner, the dealer's record should include the seller's name and address, an ID number from the seller's driver's license, a physical description of the seller and the seller's expenditures for the vehicle.

In some states, such as New York, the law requires those selling cars as scrap to submit an additional layer of paperwork. But those systems aren't perfect. Scrap yards and tow truck operators dealing in stolen cars don't plan to follow protocol anyway, said a spokesman for the New York Department of Motor Vehicles. In the end, the problem falls on law enforcement.

A Plain Dealer reporter witnessed the illegal sale while riding along with a tow truck operator to see how easy it is to sell a car for scrap without the necessary paperwork. The relationship between some tow truck operators and unscrupulous scrap dealers underlies a car theft epidemic hitting major cities across the country, including Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., Detroit and San Diego.

Rogue tow truck drivers scout city streets and highways for cars left unattended or disabled, police say. Then they tow the car; passersby have no reason to doubt their motives. And they sell it as scrap metal to be crushed and cubed before the owner even realizes it's gone.

The practice, which fluctuates with the price of scrap metal, is difficult to quantify and even harder to stop, said Lt. Jean Le- Suer of the Cleveland Police Department's Auto Theft Unit.

Car thieves steal more than 6,000 cars a year in Cleveland. Police don't know how many of these can be attributed to tow truck drivers. Not all cases are routed to auto theft detectives who keep records of the crimes; many of the investigations remain in the police districts where the theft occurred, LeSuer said.

Stolen vehicles can be destroyed more quickly than police can track them down. And new technology allows tow truck drivers to back up to a car and hook it with a push of a button --without ever leaving the tow truck's cab.

The strongest tool for prevention becomes an officer's intuition, LeSuer said. City law gives police power to stop a tow truck driver at any time and request to see paperwork authorizing a tow.

But for the past year, the city of Cleveland might have inadvertently made it easier for thieves to steal cars.

From December 2007 until mid-October, police were under instructions from the city Law Department not to enforce the tow-truck ordinance, LeSuer said.

The directive explained that a state law passed in 2003 "has delegated to the Public Utilities Commission authority to regulate and supervise motor transportation companies to the exclusion of local authorities."

Consequently, the courts dismissed citations written for violations to the city ordinance, and until the Law Department could review the issue, police were told not to enforce it.

No one understands the frustration better than Lt. LeSuer and her three auto theft investigators. The team conducts scrap yard inspections several times a month, trying to trace vehicle identification numbers on cars mashed into cubes. About one in 10 trips turns up a vehicle identification number from a stolen car, she said. It's a hazardous job -- crawling around on unstable rubble.

"It's a mess, and it's dangerous," she said. "We catch some, but these people are mindful that this could happen. They know their business is open to police, and that we can show up at any time. It behooves them to get rid of the stolen VIN as quickly as possible. And the truth is, we can only check what we can see in a giant pile of crushed cars."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

latassi@plaind.com, 216-999-4549