I’ve been a victim of copper theft. Substantial damages by the thief for a relatively small value of copper stolen. My damages were 15 times higher than the scrap value of the copper stolen.
____________________
Victor Davis Hansen has complained about copper theft at his family raisin and grapes farm. They steal copper lines that extend far to electric motors. For irrigation perhaps. Maybe for blowers to dry grapes into raisins
I do business with a trucking company and scrap yard in Idaho.
They have a machine that removes the plastic casing from Romex wire cuts it up in 1/8” long pieces and spits it into a bin. The bins stop filling up at 4000 pounds. They put 64,000 on a maxi flatbed and haul it over to Oregon twice a month. That truckload is worth over $300K at the smelter.
They also crush cars and sell for scrap.
They also recycle Catalytic Converters. A 55 gallon drum of the rare earth metals separated from the other metal parts is worth $12K. The warehouse where the machine separates those CC is monitored 24/7. The most valuable CC is on a Ford Expedition. It has two that are worth $650 each.
A thief can cut those off your SUV in about two minutes with a battery operated sawzall.
They recently started recycling tires into shredded rubber.
They is a lot of money in scrap.