Catalytic converter thieves in Chicago woke up a reporter to a big story

Usually, I’m the one at my house who wakes up at every little noise. This time, it was my husband who rolled out of bed, stepped to the window and peered through the blinds into the 3 a.m. darkness.

“What are you looking at?” I asked, lifting my head from the pillow. 

“Someone’s under the neighbor’s car,” he said.

Then, I heard it: the tinny sound of an electric saw tearing into metal.

“We should call the police,” I said, stumbling around for my phone.

As soon as I said that, there was a different sound — that of a car engine revving then tires peeling away.

I dashed to the window and saw only taillights.

The theft was over in less than two minutes.

That was my first experience with catalytic converter thefts, a nuisance crime that’s affected thousands of Chicago drivers, collectively costing them millions of dollars.

I’d seen posts on social media from fellow Chicagoans complaining that their cars had been hit and offering advice on how to prevent it.

Some weeks after that late-night theft woke me, my daughter and I were on our way to breakfast in Lake View when my phone rang.

“You’re never going to believe this,” a friend said, sounding grim.

She and her husband had left home just after 9 a.m. for a run. One moment, their legs were pumping, the sun was shining, their street was humming with people and cars. The next, they watched aghast as catalytic converter thieves attacked their car.

They caught sight of the crew as they jogged past a side street where their Toyota Prius was parked. Without thinking, they tried to stop the masked thieves but two of them pointed very large guns at my friends.

I still get sick thinking about what could have happened next.

Fortunately, these thieves were most concerned with getting the catalytic converter and getting away. They backed off, my friends’ converter in hand, and tore away in an SUV. 

Though shaken, my friends weren’t hurt.

But their frightening encounter made me wonder: What was it about this car part that made organized, armed crews want it so badly? And — because I’m a consumer investigations reporter — what are such thefts costing all of us?

The result was a deeply reported look at catalytic converter thefts in Chicago. I found that thieves had struck more than 17,000 times in Chicago since 2019, causing more than $17 million in losses and damage. And those are surely undercounts, since many people don’t even bother to file a police report.

I also found that only about 0.2% of the theft reports resulted in an arrest. In part because these crews, who’ve struck in neighborhoods all around the city, are so fast.

The story also explained the path that stolen converters take, from the “cutters” who remove them from cars to middlemen who sell them to “core buyers,” who extract the rare and valuable platinum, palladium and rhodium the devices contain.

Those metals act as catalysts inside the converter, helping clean up a car’s exhaust emissions.

Learning that rhodium had sold for as much as $29,800 an ounce and that the metals are resold and used in industries ranging from medical equipment to electronics, I understood more of what was behind this epidemic of thefts.

The story I wrote and an accompanying video also gave readers tips for keeping their car safe, which could also save them money, given that repairs typically run $1,000 to $2,500.

A follow-up story highlighted reactions we got from readers. One came from an Edgewater woman who was in labor with her first baby and heading to the hospital when she realized the catalytic converter had been cut off her car. Her husband turned on the ignition, and “it sounded like a Harley-Davidson,” she said. Thankfully, a neighbor drove them to the hospital.

Recently, it seems the theft trend is ebbing. The National Insurance Crime Bureau, which is funded by the insurance industry, says the number of claims nationally for catalytic converter thefts is about half what it was last year.

The price of rhodium is down, too — by 85%.

I’m glad we installed a metal shield under our old Prius to put an obstacle in the way of catalytic converter thieves. I’ll also keep parking it in the garage.

I figure taking these steps gives us the best chance of being able to sleep through the night, undisturbed by metal saws and masked thieves.

READ THE INVESTIGATION