Posted on 08/15/2007 10:19:16 AM PDT by 3AngelaD
One day, the spacious house in Leesburg had a stainless-steel side-by-side refrigerator. The next day, it did not. The $1,150 appliance vanished from the $900,000 home that was under construction...leaving behind a trail of scratch marks on the hardwood floor...
At construction sites, where theft of power tools and building materials has been common, some burglars also are making off with bulky appliances such as refrigerators, stoves, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers and air conditioners.
In the past few years, millions of dollars worth of appliances has vanished from new and renovated houses and condos in the Washington area, law enforcement authorities say, ending up in the hands of unscrupulous local building contractors or, in some instances, in far off places such as Guatemala and El Salvador... Gopal Ahluwalia, researcher for the National Association of Home Builders, said the theft of appliances and other construction-site materials ..."costs the industry about $5 billion a year, about 1.5 percent of the value of the house," he said...
The Loudoun County Sheriff's Office got a break last year after investigators tracked down two parked vans full of stolen appliances near Route 1 in Fairfax County...five men from Central America were charged with operating a ring that police allege stole more than $500,000 worth of appliances from county construction sites and $800,000 to $1 million worth of appliances ...in Fairfax County. Four of the defendants pleaded guilty to felony charges and were ordered deported because of their illegal status; the fifth fled the country...
In the District, Swinson said, a case of his focused on an operation that shipped ...stolen appliances from construction sites to El Salvador and Guatemala. "They would have a big truck, and the truck would be loaded up and driven across the border," he said..."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Oooh, well - guess that'll teach 'em.
Seems you need armed guards on site the moment you install the plumbing or electrical wiring in the framework.
“Seems you need armed guards on site the moment you install the plumbing or electrical wiring in the framework.”
A security system is what is needed. Most builders are too cheap to put one in to protect the house. They would rather colect the insurance.
Not to worry, it’s just altruistic “environmentalists” trying to lower America’s “carbon footprint”. Or it could be “migratory workers” doing the work that Americans won’t do.
One of the great things about America is our big a$$ refrigerators just filled with ice cold beer, wine, cheese and salsa! What a country!! Eat your hearts out Europe.
Have you ever been to Europe with their little tiny refrigerators, washing machines and dryers? Pathetic. How do they survive? P.S. they mostly ain’t got no AC either. No wonder 15,000 Frenchies died during the summer. Everything over there is SO expensive and the Europeans are SO cheap!
No wonder they’re PO’d at America. It’s called envy.
What is the fad about these things? EVERY "model" home on tv (whether it is the "rebuild your whole life" shows or eMpTyV's Cribs) has one. Doesn't ANYONE have the other kind of fridge exterior anymore?
And what possible good would a security system do? The alarm goes off, it takes a couple of minutes before the security company informs the cops, 25 more minutes before the cops can work it into their schedule to drive over to the property. Cops will not go into a residence without the owner present. So hours may go by before someone goes into a house under construction in response to an alarm and sees that, oops, more appliances are gone.
Meanwhile, the bad guys made off with the appliances long before the alarm even stopped sounding. It takes only moments to put a refrigerator or freestanding range on a hand truck and load it up.
This is nothing new. Anything valuable has a tendency to grow legs and walk off the job site in the middle of the night.
Here in NW Indiana I've noticed cameras posted on numerous commerical construction projects. I think they provide live feeds to a monitoring company.
Not a bad gig for a day laborer. He gets under the table cash for pounding nails during the day, and a nice little score of brand new appliances the same day they're installed.
Then they get a free ride home courtesy of the US taxpayer.
What a country!
L
The way the real estate prices are going, maybe it is just as well. No point in having the appliances go to waste in the fire...
I don't get it either, they're not all that IMO. Maybe if builders put in harvest gold or avocado green the thiefs would leave them alone ; )
Yes, it's a fad, just like granite countertops. It will go away after awhile. People get it because it looks like a commercial appliance for a restaurant--as if you're a really serious cook who needs her range to generate many more BTUs than the average person.
And yes, folks do have something different, like wood-front appliances. The manufacturers tried to get people interested in black for awhile, but that didn't catch on--it was too creepy having a six-foot-tall, three-foot-wide black behemoth in the kitchen. Some people are concealing their appliances behind panelled doors, or putting the refrigerator and freezer in another room altogether. My girlfriend has punched tin on the front of her dishwasher so it looks like an antique pie safe.
We got a stainless steel fridge in our home we bought 3 years ago. I liked it until I realized that fridge magnets do not stick to it! What good is a fridge without magnets!
One of my shelter magazines says that “black is going to be the new stainless steel.” It is all fashion, with the idea being you have to buy new appliances to be “stylish” regardless of whether your old ones need to be replaced.
The appliance manufacturers can make more profit by using cheap Chinese steel coated with black lead paint. LOL
There is always Scotch tape.
Oh no! I’d be lost without my magnets. Where do you put all your phone numbers and grocery lists?
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