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As originally covered by The Auto Wire, a Portland, Oregon man was caught using an old truck with a tow rig to scoop up and steal cars, selling them to a scrap yard. Now that man has learned he’ll be spending over six years in jail for his crimes.
Tow trucks in San Francisco are going after occupied cars on the road.
The tow truck driver pled guilty to charges in court, we’re assuming under a plea bargain with the prosecutor’s office. That usually means investigators have a crushing amount of damning evidence they could use to potentially go for a much longer prison sentence.
Police were investigating the stolen cars for months, but it wasn’t until a 79-year-old victim who almost had her Cadillac stolen that the first solid lead came in. She was able to pass on a description of the vehicle, with investigators tracing it to what appeared to be a legitimate towing business.
Realizing that guy was the one stealing the cars, they were able to trace those vehicles to a scrap yard, blowing the top off the operation. A whopping 80 cars had been stolen and sold to that scrap yard from August through November of 2023. The tow truck turned out to be unlicensed, too.
Originally, the tow truck driver was facing 22 criminal charges. According to a report from KPTV, 52-year-old Joseph Beard, who was running Maters Auto Recycling, was falsifying purchase paperwork, then selling the stolen vehicles to Rivergate Scrap Metal.
It’s not clear if prosecutors are going to go after the scrap yard or if they believe the business was also an innocent victim in this case. For now, Beard is going to be incarcerated for some time, hopefully learning that stealing is no way to get ahead in the long run.
Image via KPTV Fox 12 Oregon/YouTube
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