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California’s tried cracking down on catalytic converter theft with significant measures. (I think a legitimate scrapyard would have to do a bunch of paperwork to buy a cat.) Anyone know the outcomes?

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There was a nationwide catalytic converter theft ring for the first few years of the pandemic. Junkies around the country would steal cats and ship them off to New Jersey. The ringleader pleaded guilty last year: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-national-catalytic-con...

I believe this was a significant portion of the brazen daylight catalytic converter thefts in California in the early years of the pandemic.

Seems trivial to just AirTag a few car parts and follow the thieves to their warehouse, doesn't it?

How do you guarantee the tagged parts are the ones to get stolen? Tangentially, there was a theft ring caught like this but IIRC it was power tools.

My state used a few undercover cops to start fencing (not actually) stolen cats to scrapyards, identified scrapyards that would knowingly take stolen property, and then turned a few of the employees / owners of such places into CIs. Eventually a large nationwide ring was found.

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