Family pleads guilty in bust of catalytic converter theft ring

A Sacramento mother and her two sons pleaded guilty Monday to charges related to their roles in a nationwide catalytic converter crime ring that netted $38 million over three years, federal prosecutors said.

Monica Moua, 51, Tou Sue Vang, 31, and Andrew Vang, 27, admitted to conspiring to transport stolen catalytic converters from California to New Jersey in return for millions of dollars in wired payments, prosecutors said. Tou Sue Vang also pleaded guilty to an additional 39 charges related to money laundering.

The family members were arrested in November, along with 18 other people in five states, following a lengthy FBI investigation that sought to crack down on illegal supply chains nationwide. Federal investigators’ “coordinated takedown” of metal thieves targeted catalytic converters worth over $600 million that were sold to one New Jersey metal refinery, the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a statement announcing the guilty pleas.

Law enforcement agencies in California and across the country have struggled to halt the widespread thefts, which have surged since the beginning of the pandemic as global metal prices soar. The football-size emissions-control parts, located near a car’s muffler, contain a cache of precious metals prized for their high resale value.

According to court documents, the family members opened an automotive dismantling business, Vang Auto, out of their Sacramento County home in early 2019 and continued to operate it even after tax collectors suspended its license the following year.

They paid cash for catalytic converters they knew had been stolen from local thieves known as cutters, prosecutors said, and stored the stolen parts in storage facilities before shipping them to the New Jersey refinery, where their precious metals were extracted and sold.

Court documents described a covert network that ferried thousands of pounds of stolen catalytic converters from Northern California to the refinery over the course of three years. The scheme involved falsified shipping manifests, clandestine storage facilities, lucrative payouts — and a bespoke app that showed real-time prices for stolen metals.

Shari Rusk, an attorney for Moua, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. She previously told the Chronicle that her client had “very little involvement” in the scheme.

Attorneys for Moua’s sons did not respond to requests for comment.

Andrew Vang and Moua each face a maximum penalty of five years in prison, while Tou Sue Vang could face up to 20 years in prison, prosecutors said.