South Columbus man accused of running catalytic converter theft ring
A Columbus man has been accused of running a catalytic converter theft ring that stole thousands of catalytic converters in five central Ohio counties.
Tommy D. Cox Jr., 41, of the South Side, is charged with 32 felony counts that range from theft to money laundering. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, according to Franklin County Common Pleas Court records.
Five others — including a woman identified as Cox’s live-in girlfriend, 46-year-old Shannon Vance — have been charged with similar crimes, though the converter theft ring Cox is accused of leading is believed to be much larger than a half-dozen people, said Josh Gilbert, a Groveport police detective who led a nine-month investigation that led to the charges earlier this month.
“We’re working on additional indictments, but they haven’t been charged yet,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert said Cox and his cohorts pocketed $480,000 from selling more than 1,100 stolen catalytic converters to scrap yards across Greater Columbus.
“A lot of times he would prey on people that had drug problems,” Gilbert said. “So he had people cutting them for him, as well as him doing it himself. He was paying them $50 to $100 per converter.”
Cox exploited a loophole to get around Ohio law that prevents someone with a valid driver’s license from scrapping more than one catalytic converter per day, according to Gilbert.
“We in law enforcement have a system called LeadsOnline and we can track anybody that’s scrapping, pawning or anything like that as an individual. Well, they established themselves as a business for $99 on the (Ohio) Secretary of State’s website,” Gilbert said, referring to Cox and his girlfriend. “You print out a certificate. You can say anything you want on there. That allowed them to get around any regulations.”
Vance created TC’s Buy Sell Trade LLC in November 2020, records from the Ohio Secretary of State’s website show.
Catalytic converters are exhaust emission-control devices that can fetch hundreds to thousands of dollars because they are composed of precious metals, including palladium, platinum and rhodium.
Gilbert said scrap yards routinely sell the precious metals to automakers. While some in Greater Columbus only buy catalytic converters still attached to vehicles, Gilbert said some places buy unattached converters no questions asked.
Law enforcement is unable to track the sale of converters when scrap yards pay for them with cash, Gilbert said.
“There’s no way to search any business through any database in scrapping,” Gilbert said. “You have to go to each individual scrap yard and serve them with an investigative subpoena. There may be scrap yards we don’t even know about right now.”
Gilbert said he spoke with hundreds of scrap yard owners as part of the investigation.
“You wouldn’t believe how many scrap yards there are,” he added. “That’s not to say all of them take catalytic converters, but you have to find that out.”
Detectives closed in on Cox after finding an Air Tag duct-taped to the underside of a box truck with a missing catalytic converter, according to Gilbert. The Air Tag, a tracking device, was discovered to be linked to an Air Cloud account that belongs to Cox after a search warrant was filed with Apple.
Gilbert said evidence indicates that workers from Americatz, a recycling center and a scrap yard in Zanesville, regularly drove to Columbus to pick up converters from Cox that he had stolen.
“They were paying cash. He saw the amount of cash that these (workers) were holding and he Apple Air Tagged their car,” possibly to rob the workers later, Gilbert said.
Much of the Groveport Police Department worked the case and received assistance from the Franklin County Sheriff’s office, according to Gilbert.
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