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Thieves' hot discovery a new source of cold cash

The Sheriff's Office says burglars are disassembling A/C units, taking the copper coils and selling them to recyclers.

By VANESSA DE LA TORRE
Published August 11, 2006

LARGO - The burglar struck six businesses over three weeks.

Air-conditioning units were targeted instead of cash registers.

But rather than snatching the whole unit, the burglar focused on one thing: copper coils.

The suspect sold the copper to a recycling business to support a drug habit, said the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

Lawrence E. Plants, a 48-year-old Largo resident, was arrested early Thursday in connection with the burglaries after authorities say they caught him taking apart an A/C unit with power tools.

All the affected businesses were in the Ulmerton Industrial Mart in Largo. The burglaries began July 22, but business owners say the hardship rolls on.

That is: no A/C in the dead heat of summer.

Chris Tabor, owner of Clean Car Concepts, said he's had to work at another location since his A/C unit was compromised on July 31.

"It's a metal building with a metal roof, so obviously it radiates heat," Tabor said. "I'd say the temperature was 95. At least."

As of Thursday afternoon, Plants was charged with two counts of commercial burglary, two counts of grand theft and a single count of burglary to a vehicle, all felonies. He was being held at the Pinellas County Jail on $25,000 bail.

Lately, sheriff's detectives have had some ground to cover.

Not just one copper coil thief exists, said agency spokesman Sgt. Jim Bordner.

"We're seeing this in different parts of the county, so there's more than one person out there committing this type of crime," Bordner said. "And frequently, the air-conditioning unit is a total loss."

Each damaged unit in the Ulmerton Industrial Mart was valued at about $1,800. They were older units, authorities said.

Replacing them with new units will cost the building's landlord much more.

This is what the culprits do:

They kill the power to the air conditioning unit, take apart the unit enough to expose the copper coils, then strip the coils from the units.

Since it is harder, and not to mention dangerous, to disassemble a machine that is powered on, the Sheriff's Office will make this public service announcement:

One of the easiest ways to outsmart an A/C unit burglar is with a lock on the electrical box, Bordner said. "Something that can't be defeated with a bolt cutter."

When it came to the Largo burglaries, he said, a detective working the case observed that businesses with locks on the power panels "avoided being victimized."

Alpine Tool, a machinery business, was hit early Thursday. Norma Lopez owns it with her husband, Mario.

At 4:30 a.m., Mario Lopez opened the store to start the day.

A half-hour later, Norma Lopez got a call at home.

"I was scared," she said. "You get a call at 5 in the morning, it means something happened to the family."

But it was her husband.

"He was in shock. 'You wouldn't believe it. I got here and the unit is gone,' "she recalled him saying Thursday afternoon, Norma Lopez checked a thermometer inside Alpine Tool. It read 90 degrees, but that's because it stops at 90.

"It's hot, it's hot," she said. "We just sent the employees home. They're not working until they can replace the unit."

[Last modified August 11, 2006, 06:47:36]