Discussion for article #237026
Copper theft was something that occurred in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Telephone lines, plumbing, and even key infrastructure. Even radioactive scrap started to show up in Estonia, which was trading the stuff on to the West.
When people are stealing copper, you have to go after the scrap traders, as almost all copper is recycled. Once the mills purchasing scrap implemented rules on scrap, the problems in Russia vanished. New copper pipe or sheeting is a different problem as the receivers of the stolen copper can simply be another construction company, like the one the materials were stolen from.
While this was a very brazen theft, on an open subway line, this is nothing new across America. Cities throughout the nation have been shouldering millions in replacing electrical transmission lines stolen on a regular basis. Thieves go so far as to have trucks mimicking utility vans so they can prep an area, then come back in the middle of the night to execute the actual theft. In my own city, we had miles worth of underground cabling stolen from one of the high-end neighborhoods, resulting in an almost million-dollar price tag to replace. My state (CA) also has some of the nations most stringent metal recycling laws to discourage just this kind of theft.