NEW ORLEANS — Just before Christmas last year, Rachel St. Romain jumped in her Mitsubishi Highlander to go to work.
“I started my car, and it was extremely loud,” she recalled. “I mean extremely loud.”
Even with her car engine sounding like a jet about to take off, St. Romain didn’t immediately realize she had become the victim of a crime. After all, the car was parked in front of her apartment on a busy thoroughfare in Metairie, and she never heard anything suspicious or loud enough to wake her up.
So St. Romain drove as far as she could before she was forced to putter into a repair shop,
“I couldn't really accelerate that much,” she said, “The mechanic called me right away and said somebody stole your catalytic converter.”
St. Romain had become yet another victim to thieves who have been operating throughout the metro area for several years, climbing under trucks, SUVs, and other vehicles with wide clearance, taking a small but valuable part of peoples’ car exhaust system: the catalytic converter.
“It was quite expensive to replace, $1,400,” St. Romain said. “It was definitely a big hit for Christmastime. Very unfortunate.”
It's part of every car’s exhaust chain, the anti-pollution device known sometimes called “cat” for short. It sits between the engine and muffler.
And while most people don’t think twice about this metal-encased filter, it contains several types of precious metals – platinum, palladium, and rhodium – that thieves can flip to black market dealers for more than $100 a pop.
While unloading a stolen catalytic converter may go for more than that amount, getting a replacement can cost more than ten times as much. Or more.
“To replace it, you're looking at an average in the U.S., is one thousand to $1,400,” said James Roos of Custom Muffler in Kenner.
Roos should know. Over the past few years, his business has shifted dramatically as catalytic converter thefts locally have exploded.
“The past two years, like I said, it's been incredible,” Roos said. “Ninety-five percent of our business is replacing catalytic converters now that have been stolen. Just four or five years ago, it probably was about 10 percent.”
In New Orleans alone, the number of reported converter thefts went from 249 in 2021 to 331 last year, a 33 percent increase. But based on the volume of repair requests, the number of unreported thefts is believed to be much higher.
“To make it worthwhile for the thieves, they’re probably doing a hundred of them at a time,” Roos said. “I got business from a rental car agency that had about 60 of them stolen from one of their lots in one night.”
The racket is part of a national trend. Just recently, the iconic Oscar Mayer Weinermobile was hit in Las Vegas. And in a tragic story out of Southern California, a would-be “cat” thief was killed underneath an SUV when the sleeping driver woke up and started to pull off.
“Trucks, or SUVS, anything high off the ground is going to be the first thing they go after because of ease of access,” Roos said.
Unlike the impulsive car burglaries dominated by juvenile suspects, catalytic converter thieves seem to operate on a more sophisticated level, using a portable metal saw to get in and out from under a car in less than a minute.
“Clean cut, very quick, but it’s very noisy. Makes a lot of noise,” Roos said.
While the thieves in action resemble an Indy 500 pit crew, the noise compels them to hit vehicles in the dead of the night to catch owners while they’re asleep or unable to react quickly. Or they seek out cars in remote locations to avoid detection altogether.
And unlike the smash-and-grab car burglaries that have left trails of broken auto glass in parking lots throughout New Orleans, a victim of a catalytic converter theft probably won’t realize they’ve been victimized until they crank their engine.
Rob Moreau got hit while he was at a New Orleans Pelicans game. His Honda CR-V was parked in a remote lot.
“It was a good game. We won. Came out happy. Turned my car on, and it sounded like ten lawnmowers running underneath my car,” Moreau said. “Once you realize what has happened, it’s a very bad feeling. It's a total violation, and it costs a lot of money to fix it.
For Moreau, it wasn't the first time. The previous time was in front of his house Uptown about eight months earlier.
“Having been a victim before, I knew exactly what had happened,” he said. “And I was just sort of dumbfounded.”
The first time Steve Diniz was victimized, he and his family were on vacation last year in Houston.
“We get up to go have breakfast. Turn on the car, and it sounds like a Nascar race car. Really loud,” Diniz said.
The second time was in front of his home in the Faubourg Marigny.
“My other work Honda Element got hit right here at the corner of Pauger and Burgundy,” Diniz said. “Very annoying.”
The replacement converter was not cheap. Neither was the preventive measure that Diniz installed, a reinforced metal cage to prevent such quick and easy access to thieves.
“The replacement (catalytic converter) was about $1,500,” he said. “Plus the cage, that was another $300.” Diniz is referring to a reinforced metal cage that he had installed to cover his newly installed converter.
St. Romain installed a similar prevention device courtesy of her parents, a “Christmas present,” she said.
WWL-TV contacted local law enforcement agencies to comment on any efforts to crack down on these thefts, but they did not respond.
But court records reveal almost no arrests in these types of cases.
Nationally, though, the FBI recently announced the arrests of 21 people in five states in an investigation that spanned the country from California to New York. Federal authorities accused the group of acting as an organized syndicate that trafficked in at least $500 million worth of catalytic converters, fencing them through an auto shop in New Jersey.