Copper is as good as gold to a scrap metal thief. Crooks broke into a couple of homes in Florissant recently, but they weren't looking for jewelry or flat-screen televisions. One house was up for sale and the family had moved out, so it was unoccupied. The other still had a family living there, because the burglar got in through an unlocked garage door. In both cases, the thieves worked quickly to cut out as many of the copper pipes that they could get their hands on. Copper thieves resell the stuff at metal recycling facilities. For the homeowner, it can cost thousands to hire a plumber to replace the missing pipe and thousands more to repair the damage if the thieves allowed water to spill out into the home.
So, how much money could a copper crook get from a load of stolen pipes? There's up to a couple hundred pounds of pipe in an average size home. As of a couple of days ago, metal recycling centers were paying $2.45 a pound for #1 copper. That's almost a $500 payday for a copper thief. To deter thieves, the City of St. Louis passed an ordinance requiring scrap metal sellers to show an ID and scrap metal dealers have set up an email network used to communicate about suspicious sellers. Businesses in the city are confident it's cut down on the number of thieves that bring them stolen pipe, but concede that the criminals probably got to businesses outside the city where there's no similar ordinance.
The most vulnerable houses are those left vacant by foreclosure and that are on the market for sale, but the owner has already moved out. If your house is going to be vacant while you're on vacation or for an extended period of time, realtors and police advise you to make sure it's secure and take steps to make it looked lived in. You can do that by setting timers on lights and a radio and asking a neighbor to park an extra car in the driveway.
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