Copper theft is so rampant in the area that I live (people stealing copper drain pipes off of school, stealing large gauge copper wires from highway lights, stripping copper wire from unoccupied houses, etc), that state law requires someone to produce ID if bringing in more than 5lbs. And the scrap dealers are required by law to record their info. Since the law went into effect copper theft has gone down, but there are still renegade scrap dealers that will handle those transactions off the book. Some however have been bitten by undercovers posing as sellers with suspicious materials and the dealer getting busted for not taking down their info. The problem lies in that there is usually a couple of days lag time between when the copper is stolen, and the theft discovered, which gives the thieves time to get it sold before any alert goes out.
; what TAB said. And I'm sure Battlespace meant "a certain few contractors." The kind of guys you probably wouldn't want working on your house, anyway.
