Millionaire Metal Thieves; Recycle Your Butt

And more about the human and environmental costs of renewable energy and digital technology—and how we can do better.

May 15, 2025

*Photo: Homeland Security Investigations*

We tend to think of “metal thieves” as grungy meth-heads pilfering fistfuls of electric cables. But Tou Sue Vang of Sacramento, California parlayed stolen metal into a luxe lifestyle of giant homes, fancy cars and gold jewelry. Vang, 33, was a key player in a nationwide catalytic converter theft ring that made him and his family more than $38 million—until they got caught.

Catalytic converters are components of the exhaust systems in many gas-powered cars and trucks that reduce the toxins and pollutants coming out of the vehicle’s tailpipe. The key ingredients in the process are precious metals including platinum, palladium and rhodium. Basically, these metals react with the toxins in the exhaust and convert them into less harmful substances. Platinum, for instance, helps convert carbon monoxide into less-harmful carbon dioxide, while rhodium similarly helps change nitrogen oxides into nitrogen and oxygen.

The problem is that those metals are very expensive. Platinum is currently selling for around $1,000 an ounce. An ounce of rhodium fetches more than $5,000—much more than gold. So no surprise that thousands of catalytic converters are stolen every year. Those thefts have also caused at least at least a couple-few deaths—people murdered while trying to stop a theft, or thieves crushed when a jacked-up car collapsed on them.

Stealing a converter is easy; it apparently can take a skilled thief less than a minute to slip under a car and saw off the metal cylinder that houses the converter. But getting the precious metals out is hard. It takes specialized industrial machinery. That’s where Vang came in.

Thanks to supply chain disruptions, prices for platinum and rhodium skyrocketed during Covid. Vang saw an opportunity. Working with his brother and mother out of their Sacramento home in the early 2020s, Vang bought stolen catalytic converters from street thieves, known as “cutters,” and then re-sold them to a New Jersey-based auto parts company. It was a staggeringly profitable enterprise. According to federal prosecutors, Vang raked in more than $38 million. With all that cash, he bought a five-acre multi-home complex in a Sacramento suburb, another house in town, two Teslas, two Sea Doos, several other vehicles and a bunch of gold jewelry.

His confederates at the auto parts outfit would crush the cores of the catalytic converters, yielding precious metal powders. They then sold those powders to a metal refinery for more processing. This part of the stolen goods supply chain was even more lucrative: the auto parts company took in more than $621 million. The brothers who ran the show there also rewarded themselves with a Lamborghini and a Ferrari.

But all the money and flash caught the attention of the feds. They pounced in late 2022. Teams from several agencies launched “Operation Heavy Metal,” raiding locations in five states and arrested 21 people. Some have been convicted, some are still awaiting sentencing. Vang wound up pleading guilty to 39 charges related to money laundering, and last week he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

The wave of catalytic converter thefts has slowed recently, probably because the post-Covid price of the metals involved has dropped. But as attentive Power Metal readers like you know, metal theft is still a huge problem around the world. Just in the last couple of weeks, Canadian authorities arrested a copper thief on a snowmobile, while in Spain thousands of train passengers were stranded for hours after brigands made off with so much power cable that trains couldn’t run. Where there are valuables, there will be people trying to steal them—and metals are some of the most valuable materials of our time.

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Recycle Your Butt

I spotted this little streetside box in Columbia, Missouri recently and thought: “Really?” Turns out, yes: You can do something better with cigarette butts than just hoarding them for the day when you run out of smokes and have to scrape together a DIY coffin nail (not a practice I recommend, but one I can attest works). Columbia, it turns out, is one of a number of cities and businesses that have signed up with a free program run by New Jersey-based Terracycle. The company collects the cig ends, composts the unsmoked paper and tobacco, and melts down the plastic in the filter into pellets which are used for construction materials and railroad ties. Seems an excellent way to get your butt handled.

Book News

Last week, I was surprised to find myself speaking to a room full of banking and finance executives at the Payments and Banking Symposium in southern California. Digital sustainability entrepreneurs/experts Andrew Kroger and Richard Kenny and I had a great conversation, ably moderated by Priority CEO Thomas Priore, about the damage caused by manufacturing the digital machinery used by financial enterprises and how they can reduce it. Certainly not my usual scene, but a very interesting experience, with some great connections made. Just goes to show how these issues affect everyone.

Also, Greg Barnhisel gave Power Metal, the book, a thoughtful review in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Sorry to have killed your buzz, Greg.