Cayce scrapyard owner charged with violating new SC catalytic converter law - Charleston Post Courier
COLUMBIA — The owner of a Cayce scrapyard was arrested Sept. 30 under a new state law aimed at cracking down on the theft and sale of stolen catalytic converters.
Timothy Dickensheets, 41, faces 47 counts of unlawfully purchasing nonferrous metals at his American Scrap Iron and Metal facility between June 1 and July 1, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department said.
“Without places that illegally purchase converters, the thieves would not have a source to sell them,” Sheriff Leon Lott said in a statement. “The recyclers helped get the law passed and the legitimate ones follow the law.”
A measure signed in May by Gov. Henry McMaster places a near-complete ban on the sale of unattached catalytic converters to scrapyards and metal recyclers. The law classifies the parts as contraband and puts repair costs on a person or company convicted of illegally buying them.
It also set mandatory prison terms of three years for a first offense and five years for any offense after that — giving police in South Carolina power for the first time to make an arrest for the crime.
Since 2019, 1,169 converters were swiped from vehicles under the Richland County Sheriff Department’s jurisdiction, Lott said in May.
Police said Dickensheets failed to collect, retain or show ownership documents for the devices.
Catalytic converters remove toxic chemicals from vehicle exhaust systems. But they’re prized by thieves for the metals used to make them, which include palladium, platinum and rhodium. And they can be sawed off a vehicle within minutes given their accessible location between a muffler and engine block.
On the black market, thieves can collect between $50 and $600 for each catalytic converter. But vehicle owners can expect to pay almost triple that amount to replace them.
Victims quickly know they have a problem. Without a catalytic converter, vehicles run very loudly and emit a sulfur smell, like rotten eggs.
State lawmakers tightened restrictions on the sale of catalytic converters to scrapyards in 2011, allowing only licensed retailers or wholesalers to sell them and requiring metal recyclers to keep detailed records, including a copy of the seller’s name and address along with a photograph or thumbprint.
But that created a loophole for thieves, who would get money for their converters by fencing them through licensed independent buyers that pay pennies on the dollar and then sell them in bulk for a profit.
Others would simply set up roadside stands and purchase the devices — another practice now outlawed by the law.
source: https://www.postandcourier.com/columbia/cayce-scrapyard-owner-charged-with-violating-new-sc-catalytic-converter-law/article_1c038cf0-2221-11ec-a871-87be51e097b6.html
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