ENGLEWOOD — Security camera video that helped Englewood police identify a suspect in the theft of one catalytic converter from an Englewood automotive business led police to a dozen of the valued auto part that had been stolen.
Thanks to that video from an outside camera at that business and an assist from police in neighboring Clayton, Englewood police identified their suspect as 24-year-old Murat Umarzhondvich Shokhzodayev of Dayton.
The Englewood Police Department, in announcing the arrest, said Clayton police caught up with him the morning of Aug. 10 and found in his car trunk 12 stolen converters. Police also found reciprocating saws and multiple saw blades in that car trunk. Eleven of the converters in that trunk were not believed to have been stolen from the same shop in Englewood, police said.
“When the guys opened the trunk up, it was a pretty big ah-ha moment,” Englewood police Sgt. Mike Lang told News Center 7′s Kayla McDermott.
“I mean, 12. You’re figuring probably a little under two grand,” Lang said, estimating the total street value of the stolen converters found in that car trunk.
John Weber, who owns Weber Automotive Service in Dayton, said the interior components of the converters are what bring in big dollars. A catalytic converter is an exhaust emission control device that converts toxic gases and pollutants in exhaust gas from an internal combustion engine. They are stolen and sold to scrap yards for cash because they contain precocious metals. Precious metals found inside the auto part include platinum, palladium and rhodium.
According to kitco.com, rhodium is worth $12,850 an ounce, palladium is $2,040 an ounce, and platinum is worth $884 an ounce as of July 2022.
Andy Stump, Weber’s shop manager, said, “you can get into three-, four-, five-hundred dollars really easy. I got one in here now that’s 29-hundred” dollars.
Lang estimated that it’s “36-thousand in total to all the people who have them stolen. That’s what they’re out.”
“It’s everywhere,” he said about the problem of converters being stolen. “It’s a nationwide problem.”
The Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office has approved four felony counts of theft, vandalism and possession of criminal tools against Shokhzodayev, according to the police department.
As of Thursday night, Shokhzodayev was not listed as a Montgomery County Jail inmate.