Nathan McKee doesn’t rest easy at night anymore. He often awakes when a noise or movement sets off the security light outside his bedroom window.

McKee’s anxiousness began after he and his wife heard what they thought was construction commotion several months ago when they were living in an apartment in Portland’s Lloyd District.

They realized what was going on the next morning when their car roared and rattled as they started it up to run errands.

Experiences similar to McKee’s have occurred with increasing frequency to unsuspecting car owners across the country as thefts of catalytic converters have skyrocketed over the past two years.

The thieves have become so bold and prolific that Oregon lawmakers passed a new law to make it harder to sell the stolen parts — standard pollution equipment on cars that use tiny amounts of precious metals to cleanse gas emissions. The metals, and the soaring price they bring, largely drive the increase in thefts.

The law went into effect in January, so it’s too early to tell if it will make a dent in the pervasive crime. But some in the legitimate scrap business are pessimistic that it will curb the thriving black market.

Police in Portland and elsewhere have largely conceded the territory to the thieves, saying they don’t have enough officers to patrol for the crime or don’t respond because it isn’t typically a felony. Amid a record wave of homicides and shootings and historically high officer vacancies, no Portland police detectives are assigned to focus on car and car part thefts.

The theft of car parts in Portland has jumped 270% in the past five years to 4,908 reports last year, with stolen catalytic converters fueling the increase, according to data from the police bureau.

Sixth-worst in the country

Oregon ranks sixth in the nation for catalytic converter theft, according to 2021 claims data from State Farm, the largest auto insurer in Oregon and in the U.S.

The company paid $32,600 for 24 catalytic converter theft claims in 2019 in the state, compared to $1.9 million for 1,311 claims last year. Nationally, State Farm’s catalytic converter claims rose from $4.6 million in insurance payouts to $62.6 million over the same period.

McKee ended up dropping more than $1,000 on a replacement catalytic converter when his was stolen in late 2021 — along with an anti-theft shield to cover it.

The expense came just as the couple had put a down payment on their first house and felt like a “sucker punch” to the gut, McKee said.

“I feel very fortunate that we are finally in a position in our lives where we actually have a little bit of money saved up,” he said. “You feel like you’re getting ahead and you’re doing everything right. And then something like that happens.”

Before 10 a.m. on a recent Monday, A1 Muffler on SW Barbur Boulevard in Portland had already replaced four stolen catalytic converters.

A1 is among 10 shops specializing in muffler and exhaust system repairs surveyed by The Oregonian and all said they’ve seen a dramatic rise in replacing catalytic converters in the past two years.

“My business has doubled,” said A1 owner Lee Ennis, “but I’m making a lot of money on other people’s misfortune, and it’s so sad.”

In an average week, his shop installs 15 to 25 new converters — steel boxes bolted or welded under cars that house filters containing metals including rhodium, palladium and platinum. The metals create a chemical reaction to convert harmful gases to more benign exhaust that blows out the tailpipe.

The Environmental Protection Agency mandated catalytic converters for U.S.-made vehicles in the 1970s and, except for fully electric cars and some diesel vehicles, every vehicle manufactured since has one or more converters. At Toyota of Portland on NE Broadway, the dealership ordered more than 240 converters in 2021 for its top three models, including the Prius and Highlander hybrids, as demand for replacements increased from just 14 two years before.

Gas-electric cars are among the most targeted by thieves because they contain a higher amount of the precious metals. In the legal recycling process, platinum, palladium and rhodium can be reused to make new catalytic converters or in pharmaceuticals, electronics and jewelry.

The market price for platinum and palladium this year is about $1,000 to $2,500 per ounce. Rhodium is trading around $18,000 an ounce compared to about $3,000 two years ago. In comparison, gold currently trades for $2,000. A standard catalytic converter has just a few grams of precious metals.

Already this year, people have reported more than 800 thefts of car parts in Portland. Thieves regularly hit Portland International Airport for catalytic converters — 38 were stolen from cars in lots and garages by mid-March, according to the Port of Portland, despite increased security measures.

Thieves typically use social media sites like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist and OfferUp to sell the catalytic converters for $100 to $300 cash no questions asked.

From there, an intermediary usually sells converters to unscrupulous scrap metal recyclers or processors that launder the metals, authorities say.

They also may mail or ship them to buyers out of state or overseas.

New law kicks in

Multnomah County prosecutor Kevin Demer remembers the 2014 racketeering case and later conviction of Tony Schneider Sr., the owner of two family auto yards in Portland, who spent nine months in jail in 2018 and paid more than $300,000 in restitution for crushing stolen cars.

A lesser known fact about that case: Schneider and several members of his family also raked in more than $1 million by selling catalytic converters to legitimate recyclers before crushing the cars, Demer said.

Since then, Demer realized the need for a more holistic approach to disrupt the supply chain: “We can’t keep arresting and convicting our way out of these problems,” he said.

Demer worked with state lawmakers to help write Senate Bill 803 to build a system that could better track catalytic converter sales.

The new law limits sales to commercial, licensed metal recyclers only. Those businesses have the equipment to extract the precious metals inside before sending them to a refinery. The steel shells also can be recycled to make new converters or other products.

The recyclers must now record the make, year, vehicle identification number and license plate of the car associated with each catalytic converter they buy. Previously, recyclers only had to photocopy a seller’s ID before sending the check.

And sellers must show proof that they owned the car with a title or registration.

The recyclers still can’t use cash: As has been the practice for more than a decade, they must send a check to the seller in the mail three business days after the sale to deter metal thefts.

Oregon’s new law also prohibits auto wrecking facilities and dismantlers from buying catalytic converters off the street. These businesses take cars apart, typically if they’ve been totaled in a crash. If the businesses want to sell salvaged catalytic converters to recyclers, they must now tag and identify each one with information showing where the converter came from.

A national push by advocates in the auto industry to require automakers to put VIN numbers on all catalytic converters hasn’t succeeded. In the meantime, many states, including California and Washington, have bills in motion to ban cash sales of catalytic converters and require VIN etching. Free etching events have attracted crowds near Seattle, where residents are also plagued by thefts.

Sean Daoud, president of the Pacific Northwest chapter of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries and co-owner of Rivergate Scrap Metals in Portland, said it’s not clear yet how effective the Oregon law will be to discourage thieves.

“The hope is that now we’ve created a process and a documentation trail, so if something illegal is happening, the facilities that are doing it the right way can support law enforcement to take them down,” Daoud said.

At the same time, he said: “A lot of legislators think they’re coming to us, but they don’t come to us because thieves are not looking for something traceable. They don’t want a check. They want cash.”

Legitimate scrap dealers “turn away people that would show up with a shopping cart full of catalytic converters because they would know they’re stolen,” he said. “We just wouldn’t do business with those people.”If someone comes into his yard with a suspicious sale, Daoud said he reports it to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, but he’s not sure what happens after that.

It appears to be a relatively porous system of checks and balances.The new law calls for county sheriff’s offices to be the clearinghouses for metal businesses reporting red flags.

The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office tracks those reports with an incident-specific code, which helps deputies connect similar cases and identify locations or people frequently involved in suspected thefts, said sheriff’s office spokesperson Chris Liedle.

The agency is developing training on the new law, Liedle said, but he couldn’t say how or when deputies will enforce it.

The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles also has oversight on the theft problem, but it licenses and inspects the record-keeping of only vehicle dismantlers, said DMV spokesperson David House.

The DMV reports any suspicion or evidence of failure to follow the law to local enforcement agencies. If a dismantler is convicted of a crime, it can lose its certification. Other scrap metal and recycling businesses are inspected by state business licensing boards.

Even before the new law, companies transporting catalytic converters were required to fill out and carry an inventory form, but it’s not clear who monitored compliance.

Sen. Chris Gorsek, D- Troutdale, a chief sponsor of SB 803, said he plans to follow the impact of the law because he doesn’t “want to plug up one hole and leave another one completely open and available.”

“The professional folks who are operating and selling on the black market, they’ll be more difficult to catch,” Gorsek said. “But there is also the group of folks who are the more opportunistic – on the streets just looking for a quick buck, and those folks should be dissuaded.”

‘Huge problem’

Police and prosecutors acknowledge an uphill battle.

While residents are encouraged to file a police report if someone steals their catalytic converter, there’s little officers are able to do about the crime.

The Portland Police Bureau had a detective assigned to investigate thefts of cars and car parts, but that was two years ago and a lot has changed since then, said spokesperson Sgt. Kevin Allen.

“That detective left the agency and our staffing is much lower now,” Allen said. “In my experience, catalytic converters are stolen a lot. … It’s a huge problem.”

That frustrates Michael Alldritt, owner of Alpine Motors. Alldritt said thieves swipe three or four catalytic converters from cars at his Northeast Portland dealership every week even though he has cameras, alarms and has patrolled the lot himself.

“I call the cops and they act like they don’t want to come out,” he said. “We wait for a long time and when they do get there, they act like there’s nothing they can do. The officers say, ‘Even if we did catch them, they’d be right out of jail because they didn’t commit a felony.’”

A recent case filed by Demer, the deputy district attorney, illustrates the difficulties of prosecuting what typically amount to low-level property crime cases because catalytic converter thieves are rarely caught in the act.

Demer is prosecuting Joshua Matthew Ephrem, 32, of Gresham, who was arrested in 2020 after a security guard at Providence Portland Medical Center saw him using a jack to lift a Prius, according to court records.

Ephrem is accused of stealing at least four catalytic converters from the hospital’s parking lot, mostly from Priuses belonging to nurses, and three from cars parked in the airport economy lot. He allegedly sold the catalytic converters for $200 each to support a heroin addiction, according to the records.

He was released from jail a few months later. He was arrested three times in 2021 and charged each time with possession of a stolen car. He was released again and didn’t show up for a court date last August in the catalytic converter theft case, records show.

Ephrem was arrested in Clackamas County in October and has been held in Inverness Jail in Portland since February.

Sarah Hunsberger, a librarian at Lewis & Clark College, was Christmas shopping for less than an hour in December when someone cut out the catalytic converter from her Toyota Highlander while it was parked in a Happy Valley TJ Maxx lot in the middle of the day.

“It was a shock,” Hunsberger said. “And also I was a little impressed that someone had the skill to be able to do that so quickly, in an area that was so crowded. I mean, it must be someone who has a lot of practice.”

Reece Nitschke , a mechanic, replaced his own Toyota Prius’ catalytic converter after it was stolen from a gated lot outside his workplace in southeast Portland. Twice he’s caught people in the act underneath other Priuses around the city.

“I understand it’s just property crime, and the police aren’t interested in pursuing it,” Nitschke said. “But it’s hurting people in Portland financially. It’s crippling, when your car’s disabled and you have no way of fixing it.”

For Patrick Ogawa, a catalytic converter theft made it “extremely difficult” for him to get to work on time, forcing him to take the bus from his home in Southeast Portland to his job in Northeast – a two-hour ride each day.

Like many, Ogawa didn’t have comprehensive insurance on his older model car and can’t afford to replace it.

When McKee and his wife moved into their new house recently, they installed cameras and a security light. They’re building a fence around their driveway.

“The frustration is just that there’s no course to make it better. That’s the hard part – feeling helpless,” McKee said.

“If your car or catalytic converter gets stolen in Portland, people throw up their hands and say, ‘Well, that’s just the way it is.’ Well, it shouldn’t be like this.”

Police, mechanics and insurance adjusters suggest some precautions for deterring catalytic converter theft, often called a crime of opportunity.

Know if you’re a target: Check with your neighborhood mechanic or do a quick Google search to check if your car is a common target for catalytic converter theft. Certain models, especially hybrids, are sought after because their catalytic converters contain more precious metals. Know this before buying a car, so you can make an informed decision.

Consider where you’re parking: Park in secure or well-lit areas as much as possible. Garages or private parking are ideal. Thieves often target cars parked on the street and in public parking areas, even high traffic areas such as grocery store lots, so move your car frequently if you can. A car parked in the same spot for days can be an invitation to theft.

Install an anti-theft device: Mechanics can bolt a metal shield to a car frame to cover the catalytic converter, which costs about $350 to $500, not including installation costs. The shield looks like a cage or metal plating. But a determined thief with a saw can simply spend a few extra minutes cutting, so it’s not a guarantee.

Weld the converter: Similar to the anti-theft shield, you can ask a mechanic to weld in the catalytic converter, making it harder to remove.

Mark or engrave the catalytic converter: Using an engraver or anything with a sharp metal end, etch something personal onto the converter that could raise a red flag to someone down the chain of commerce if it’s stolen. Experts recommend etching the car’s VIN or your license plate number to identify ownership.

Set up a security system: Many people have “caught” someone stealing their catalytic converter with a security camera like the Ring doorbell. While surveillance doesn’t stop thefts from happening, it can provide evidence for police or an insurance claim. Insurance companies recommend installing motion-sensitive lights to help deter a thief at night. Or calibrate your car’s alarm to sound when it detects vibration.

Get comprehensive insurance: The coverage may pay half or all of the cost to replace a catalytic converter. If you carry only liability coverage, you’ll have to pay out of pocket. If you own a car that’s a common target, experts suggest lowering your deductible just in case it happens to you.