It’s a multibillion-dollar global problem, and in a rapidly electrifying world, the profits—and ease—of stealing metals are only going to increase.
Something had gone wrong with the giant radio tower. Will Payne, of Payne Media Group, got an alert from his utility company in the middle of the night telling him as much. But it wasn’t until he got to the site around 5 am, in subzero temperatures, that he realized what had happened. The tower in question, a 499-foot mast in the middle of a field in Hugo, Oklahoma, was almost as tall as the UN building in New York. It broadcast K95.
By studying metal prices and reports of converters going missing, including on the Nextdoor social network, Stickle and his coauthors estimate that, for every 10 percent rise in metal prices, there’s a 20 percent uptick in thefts of these devices. Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to harvest metal.