Assholes stole & sold $500K-$700K wrought iron for $12K

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ghostjmf · #1 Post by **ghostjmf** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 3:39 pm

City workers, caught & going down for it. But the Longfellow Bridge is that much poorer & so are we all.

Its weird; reflecting on the recent uglification (just talking about the physical aspects, now) of where I work, inside, recently, in the name of "modernization", I was somewhere I'm not usually, some suburb, on the T since my car is in shop, looking out at & thinking happily about all the old buildings with intricately carved stonework etc on the outside around here which at least haven't been "replaced for the sake of progress".

And then this happens. I hope they put the skunks in a big ugly new prison.

City is Boston, if you need that for fact-checking & all.

Butt Cream · #2 Post by **Butt Cream** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 3:43 pm

Assholes and prisons?

Sounds like my services are needed!

SportsFan68 · #3 Post by **SportsFan68** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 4:07 pm

Same thing happened to the small municipality I was in Human Resources at -- five people got fired for stealing copper, three of them who combined had more than 50 years of service. The other two were summer temps. What a shame, to ruin three careers and put a black mark on two resumes of people who were just starting out, all for a share of about $500. They were thinking, "they'll never miss it."

KillerTomato · #4 Post by **KillerTomato** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 4:27 pm

The latest thing around the Burgh is stealing manhole covers. From the middle of the street.

Yeah, now THERE'S something that wouldn't be missed....

gsabc · #5 Post by **gsabc** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 4:58 pm

What I want to know is why the scrap dealer didn't question it at all, or check into whatever it was they claimed about its origins. Even as second-hand material from a demolition site, it was worth way more than $12K. Architects and builders pay good money for stuff like that, as do high-end home owners looking for some extra cachet to their mansions.

If I were on the Boston PD, I'd be checking into the background of the scrap dealer and their other transactions, too.

ghostjmf · #6 Post by **ghostjmf** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 5:07 pm

Well, the thieves got $12K, or at least that's all the cops caught them with. The dealer, whoever they were, may have got a lot more if they sold it & didn't melt it after all. Even so, this could be in several much smaller pieces all over the country or world by now; its not like a painting, which is completely ruined by cutting it up (so hopefully the thieves don't cut those up, though there have been some that have been ripped from frames, & ruined around the edges). Or even a book of maps, which at least you can put together if you can get all the maps back.

Hey! We've (as in we=Boston) lost some of those, too.

It would be a pretty good welding job putting this stuff back together, but maybe not as expensive as making it all again new. Which no-one is saying Boston will even think of paying for, not at the moment.

And with the ironwork; a few hours before the arrest, the news media were stilling saying "lost". Like "the dept of public works had several tons of wrought iron that they just, you know, misplaced somewhere".

(I guess some people must have come forward about that heavy truck activity they had seen those 2 guys doing that they just now remembered; the media are now listing the trucks that were used to move it, like its an important part of the story.)

Bob Juch · #7 Post by **Bob Juch** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 7:06 pm

My plumber told me about another one who not only convinced a homeowner to replace all of their brass plumbing, but to pay for the new copper pipes.

Rafferbee · #8 Post by **Rafferbee** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 7:26 pm

I had a friend who worked at a landfill. They caught two brothers who worked there stealing thousands of dollars worth of dirt. They had a landscaping business on the side.

ghostjmf · #9 Post by **ghostjmf** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 4:05 pm

Newest news is that its iron plate (probably they said that to begin with but it didn't take in my brain, or whatever). The people standing by piles of presumably "the pieces that are left" (you never know what they are really standing by, those TV guys; whatever makes the best picture) showed just humongous curved plates with intricate detail at the "ends that show" parts. That's the hard part to replicate; all that old, old workmanship. The iron was just taken off to, you know, clean it back up & slap it back on. Yeah. The pieces that would actually look good on somebody's fence are apparently (from those TV guys again; I hope they weren't just using old footage; nah, they showed the canvas or whatever sheets covering the stuff that was taken off) still on the bridge. So far. (Those pieces are flat plates with intricate bas-relief work.)

The guy who runs the scrap metal yard is being very helpful, providing the cops with camera footage that nails these guy driving in (in job-owned vehicles) with the iron. But he definitely says he melted it all down & sold it.