Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne has announced that a multi-million dollar copper theft ring has been broken up.
The Department of Public Safety began investigating the ring after a traffic stop of a semi-truck in September. The truck was carrying nearly $180,000 worth of raw copper stolen from the ASARCO mine in Hayden.
During the criminal investigation, DPS determined that several ASARCO employees helped steal the raw copper. Others drove the raw copper loads to heavy metal recyclers in both Arizona and California. The heavy metal recyclers would purchase the stolen copper from them at a fraction of the commodity price and then resell it to Chinese importers at a profit.
The defendants face 10 criminal counts including conspiracy, money laundering and theft involving nearly $10 million in stolen raw copper from ASARCO.
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