Editorial: Stop sales of stolen catalytic converters

Platinum, palladium and rhodium are precious metals that live inside your car, in a gadget called the catalytic converter.

Thieves hot for these metals can remove a catalytic converter from the underside of a vehicle in seconds, leaving the owner with a noisy car and a repair bill upward of $1,000. They’re resold, and eventually on this shady path, the metals may be extracted and sold again. Rhodium alone is worth more than $18,000 per ounce; a typical catalytic converter contains just a few grams, but that’s still worth several hundred dollars.

This criminal behavior must be stopped.

Catalytic converters have been required in vehicle exhaust systems since the 1970s. They work, as the name suggests, as a catalyst to convert hazardous emissions such as carbon monoxide into more benign gases. A key weapon against air pollution, the catalytic converter makes its magic through a chemical reaction wrought by those precious metals.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau, which tracks property loss, says this particular genre of thievery has been on a sharp upward path since the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020, largely driven by high demand for the metals and their scarce supply. Rhodium, for example, has uses from making jewelry more shiny to powering aircraft engines.

The University of Hawaii-Manoa on Monday reported a string of thefts from vehicles parked all over campus. The most frequently hit have been low-emission and hybrid vehicles, which have the highest levels of those precious metals. The Toyota Prius is the No. 1 target, UH said, but everyone’s vulnerable.

AAA Hawaii testified before a state Senate committee last month that Honolulu police dealt with more than 1,800 reports of stolen devices in 2020. Catholic Charities Hawai‘i then brought the issue home, testifying that converters were stolen from eight vehicles it uses to transport frail seniors on errands, costing the nonprofit up to $2,500 per vehicle.

The Legislature is responding with a powerful bill that takes aim at not just the thieves, but at those who buy their stolen goods. Senate Bill 2279 would make the theft of a catalytic converter a Class C felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. It requires anyone who resells a converter to prove through a notarized statement or receipt that they are the lawful owner. A dealer who buys a used one must keep detailed records of the sale — including identification and photographs of the seller — as well as tag the device itself and report the purchase to police. Payments must be made by check to further solidify the paper trail. Violations are also a Class C felony.

Similar requirements would apply to the sale of any extracted platinum, palladium or rhodium, added to a section of the Hawaii Revised Statutes that already covers the sale of copper. Remember when copper bandits could put out a line of streetlights by digging out the copper wire? This section of the law also specifically covers beer kegs (stainless steel) — and, to show how low this lawlessness can go — burial urns (various metals, often stolen with human ashes inside).

The Honolulu prosecutor’s office notes that the market for stolen copper dried up significantly when laws were enacted to target that metal, raising hope that the same will hold true for this legislation. The Senate bill has crossed over to the House, where it will be heard today. It is a tidy, comprehensive response that came together soon after the problem was identified and deserves to become law as soon as possible. It should make it a lot harder for thieves to profit from this particular selfish act, driving them away from this nasty line of criminality.