Thieves turning building materials into precious metals

by Andrew Petkofsky
for Virginia Business
October 2007

General contractors in Virginia are keeping a close eye on their job sites. A nationwide increase in scrap metal prices has led to a surge in thefts, with anything made of copper particularly vulnerable.

“They’re stripping houses as they’re getting wired,” says Geoff Bambini, vice president of THR Enterprises Inc. in Norfolk. “You’re getting copper ripped out of brand new equipment sitting on job sites that hasn’t even been installed."

In one case, thousands of pounds of metal for an all-copper roof for the recently opened Archaerium museum at Historic Jamestowne near Williamsburg were stolen from the roofing contractor before the material could be delivered, says L. J. Swain, executive vice president for Daniel & Co. Inc., the project’s Richmond-based general contractor. The roofing contractor and its insurance company dealt with the loss and provided new material for the Jamestowne project at no additional cost to the contractor.

“It happens a lot. I’d say there’s been a spike in that maybe in the last four or five years,” says Swain. “When [the metal is] on site we concern ourselves with it more than we used to, but we also try to time the deliveries a little better so it’s not sitting there before we can secure it.”

While general contracting executives blame the recent spurt of thefts on the spike in prices for scrap metal, Virginia hasn’t suffered the sort of epidemic reported in some parts of the country. State construction officials characterize thefts here as an ongoing, periodic problem. “I have not been receiving phone calls,” says Patrick Dean, president of the Virginia chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors in Chantilly.

Still, contractors remain wary with copper prices double what they were a year ago. Scrap metal dealer Robert Chenman of L. Chenman Inc. in Norfolk says the price ranged from $2.25 to $2.60 a pound recently, compared with $1.20 to $1.30 a year ago. To avoid buying stolen metals, Chenman says, he checks the identification of anyone he doesn’t know. But his vigilance doesn’t always work: A man whom he had purchased metal from in the past was later arrested for stealing metal from him and taking it to another scrap dealer half a mile away.