Onslow Sheriff: 3-county investigation uncovers catalytic converter criminal ring, 27 charged

A three-county investigation has ended with the arrest of 27 people and the recovery of 653 catalytic converters.

The Onslow County Sheriff's Office partnered with the New Hanover and Pender County Sheriff's departments in a several month investigation called Operation Sawzall. The operation uncovered a major catalytic converter theft organization, according to officials at a press conference at the Onslow County Sheriff's Office Thursday morning.

"Over the past year, nationally, the National Insurance Crime Bureau indicates that the increase for larcenies have been over 305% throughout the nation," said Onslow County Chief Deputy Colonel Chris Thomas at the conference.

"In Onslow County, over the past four months, larcenies jumped over 107%. In 2020, we had about 95 separate larcenies of these catalytic converters. The first four months of this year, we've had 97."

Related coverage: Check your vehicle: Catalytic converter thefts on the rise again in Onslow County

Catalytic converters are part of the emissions system in a vehicle, helping filter the exhaust and gas, and their value comes from the precious metals that make them up; rhodium, platinum and palladium.

"These parts can cost anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 apiece to replace if they're damaged or stolen," Thomas said. "They're often stolen from vehicles that are unattended or left in a place that may be an easy target for thieves to cut them off, hence the name of our operation, Operation Sawzall."

At the conclusion of the collaborative investigation, Thomas said investigators uncovered 27 different conspirators and recovered 653 catalytic converters, with one man, in particular, leading the criminal enterprise, Emerson Jordan.

"These individuals would steal the catalytic converters, they would go to a middle man, which most of them are on this chart, and that middle person would carry them to Mr. Jordan in Pender or New Hanover County and they'd sell them to him," Thomas said. "He, in turn, would sell them back at a much greater price at different places in the state that he could go to sell them."

Thomas said they assigned 423 felony charges related to the thefts on the 27 different conspirators, all of which are charged with a continuing criminal enterprise, which Thomas said is a criminal organization that has an individual in a leadership role, with people working together to facilitate a crime.

He said the individuals stealing these converters were getting roughly $200 for each when they sold them to Jordan, who would then double his money when he sold them.

"To the individual who had it stolen from their car, it's costing them from $1,300 to $3,000 to replace them, so, the value or the impact on our citizens was tremendous to have to come up with that kind of money because your vehicle tech really does not work without that," Thomas said.

Thomas added that although the sheriff's office has been making random arrests here and there related to catalytic converter thefts, Operation Sawzall likely made up a big portion of the larcenies in these counties.

He also said there was no way one agency could have handled this alone.

"The cooperation that we had with our fellow sheriff's offices, our federal and state agencies, is paramount to trying to get an operation like this done," Thomas said. "Criminals, they don't know, or they know where the county line is, but they don't care. They need to understand that we don't care either. We're going to reach out to our counterparts and we're going to chase them until we catch them, and hopefully, this will reduce the catalytic converter larcenies in our county."

He said since they did the roundup of the individuals involved, which began last Tuesday, within two days, he hadn't seen any recent catalytic converter larcenies.

Related coverage: Catalytic converter thefts increasing as sheriffs warn residents to be vigilant

Thomas also added that last year, a legislature was passed that said a person who is in possession of a detached catalytic converter and cannot prove ownership, is violating the law, and it also prohibits scrap metal dealers and recycle centers from purchasing a catalytic converter from individuals that are selling them unless they are a licensed business with a legitimate reason to have them.

"Due to the increase of thefts of them, a lot of the manufacturers are saying they're going to start putting VIN numbers on them so that when we find them, we can determine whether they were actually stolen or not," Thomas said. "Currently, they are not, it's difficult to match a catalytic converter back to a particular larceny when they're stealing them from a three-county area."

Although the investigation began in February, and the operation has come to a close, Thomas said the investigation is ongoing.

"This is the first phase of it," Thomas said. "There are a lot of leads they're still following, but this was the core group that we started working on and we got to the point where we could round them up."

Reporter Morgan Starling can be reached at mstarling@gannett.com