Caught on camera

[Produce Guy]

Local news channel the other night had a story on about a guy who tried to steel copper pipe from an A/C unit while it was on.The hidden camera showed him cutting thru the pipe and then a blast of freon hits him in the face and burns him ,but he keeps cutting and then packs it into a backpack and tries to get away.When the cops catch him he has burn marks on several different places on his face, but the good thing is he got on T.V.

[TexasDigger1]

Some people would rather steal than get an honest paying job, glad he got caught.

[bootybay]

every vacant house around here has been totally stripped and some homes that are over 200 yrs old as well.. went into one and was shocked at the wall and floor damage done to get wires and pipes out.. Nothing worse then a thief.

[l0cke]

This kind of thing disgusts me. I had a friend who was going to sell me a house fairly cheap and held it for me. About 4 months go by and I had just about enough money to give him half of the full price so we could move in and he calls to let me know that it'd been broken into and _all_ of the accessible wires and fixtures ripped out. Damned scrap thieves. I went over and took a look around and whoever did it hadn't just gone for what was visible, nailed down or not but they actually cut into the ceilings and walls going after fixtures and wire, all in all making it completely unlivable. Ridiculous. The poor guy had no insurance and is pretty much screwed as far as things go. The amount of money those dimwits that did it probably got for the scrap wouldn't even cover a reasonable fraction of the repairs for the damage they'd caused. Even here in Texas it's all too common. I wish these people would give a thought to how they'd feel if some loser came over to their house or their parents' house and did that kind of damage and what it would cost to repair it all.

[bjybjy]

Looting of houses for copper is so bad in some cities that it is law you must use non-copper pipes for plumbing in new houses to discourage theft.

[centfladigger]

I see it every day, I do foresclosure home inspections for alot of banks here in central Fl. I average 80+ homes a day. Anything from a mobile home to million dollar houses. The first thing to go is the outside a/c unit and then they bust in and if they can will camp out a few days and strip the house. I have found squatters who live in these foreclosed homes and work it as a job. They get into the attics and stomp the drywall down and then can cut all the wire they want from a step ladder from the floor.
they bust all the vanities and fixtures for that little bit of copper, a/c handler is always gone and on the older framed houses sometimes you cant tell because they crawl under the house and cut the bigger wires and thats it.
these banks all keep the insurance current on these foreclosures and could carte less of the damage. Friday I did 87 jobs and 33 of those were vacant inspections, takes too much time out of my day to do these walk throughs and half of those were damaged from copper theft.
I find hoardes of copper all the time. Alot of it I find outside the house where they stash it to come back and get it. I find their tools they leave because they are coming back to finish the house. I could go on and on about what I see daily but yall get the idea, here are a few pics from a mobile home I did Friday