By Katherine Sayre and Patience Haggin | Photography by Damon Casarez for WSJ

LOS ANGELES -- Rahdeese Alcutt, an AT&T investigator, once managed line repairs for the telecommunications company in this sprawling city. Now, he is the copper police.

Thieves have wreaked havoc in the area, prying open manholes, chipping away at asphalt and climbing trees and poles to cut and steal -- and then resell -- copper wires that transmit electrical signals for phone and internet lines.

Alcutt patrols the streets and relies on sensors and geotrackers to get alerts when the lines are being tampered with or removed. Information about some thefts is reported to an AT&T security hotline. He has even received tips from local gang members who are tired of their internet going out.

"We've become a little bit of a detective agency," said Andrea Moore, a director of access construction and engineering at AT&T.

Los Angeles is a hot spot in a nationwide wave of copper thefts as prices for the metal sit near record highs, leaving telecommunications companies under siege. The cut lines have disrupted 911 emergency calls and internet and landline services, shut down at least one school and left whole city blocks in the dark.

Federal regulators call it a growing epidemic, and stopping the thieves has become a game of cat and mouse for law enforcement.

From January to June of this year, 9,770 incidents of intentional theft or sabotage on communications networks were reported, according to the Internet & Television Association, a trade group known as NCTA. That is nearly double the number reported in the prior six-month period. The attacks disrupted service for more than eight million customers.

"These are deliberate acts of destruction that cut off communities, put lives at risk and cost millions of dollars to repair," said Federal Communications Commissioner Olivia Trusty. "This is an issue that jeopardizes the reliability, resilience and public safety of our communications infrastructure."

AT&T says the thefts have cost the company $76 million in just the first 10 months of this year, as it needs to repair and replace lines. The company has been lobbying federal, state and local governments to make it easier to replace its copper networks with more modern technologies, in part because of the cost of upkeep.

Demand for copper, a conducting metal used in electrical wiring, has risen in recent years alongside the boom for wind turbines, electric vehicles and data centers for artificial intelligence. Copper prices hit a record high of $11,146 a ton on the London Metal Exchange last month.

Local scrapyards buy copper and resell it to larger metal recyclers, which process and refine it so it can be recycled into new products.

The copper pirates have pried heavy metal plates from sidewalks to access underground lines. They use hard hats and vests to disguise themselves. They watch crews repair the lines they had cut only hours or days earlier, waiting to strike again.

"It really hurts to see what the city's become," Alcutt said of Los Angeles.

Outside a closed church in the area, a cut cable recently hung on a pole, with fiber-optic wires dangling on a tree. Piles of casings, stripped of their copper, had been crammed outside a basement window.

Members of the Four Tray Gangster Crips gang nearby got tired of their internet going out -- and of the added police presence the copper thieves had invited -- and notified AT&T security when they saw suspected copper thefts in action, Alcutt said.

Across the country, thieves have struck home air-conditioning units, public streetlights and private businesses. In Missouri, copper wires were stolen from a wind-turbine site. In Louisville, Ky., law enforcement arrested seven people in an alleged copper-theft scheme based on a tip from a scrapyard.

More and more copper thefts look like the work of organized groups of thieves, said Amir Ehsaei, a special agent in charge of the counterterrorism division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Los Angeles field office. The FBI has been working with local law enforcement to identify and arrest the perpetrators.

Alcutt recently encountered a woman who was part of a suspected thieving group processing stolen copper in an encampment. She used an aerosol can and lighter to shoot fire at him, then grabbed a machete, he said. The woman was arrested and faces charges including assault with a deadly weapon, according to Los Angeles County court records.

Verizon Communications and some other telecom companies are installing location-tracking devices in copper wiring so they can follow the trail of stolen material.

They also put up perimeter fencing to make it harder for people to climb the poles, said Verizon deputy general counsel Rudy Reyes.

Some companies have posted rewards for information leading to arrests and convictions in high-theft areas. In Los Angeles, one thief nicknamed "Bubbles" defected from a copper-stealing group and turned in his associates to AT&T. Bubbles walked away with $10,000.

Telecom companies and regulators are calling for tougher penalties and stricter enforcement. Vandalizing private communications infrastructure isn't a felony in every state.

The Charter Communications network is made of fiber-optic cables, created from fiberglass and plastic, which deliver faster internet speeds, require less maintenance and don't have resale value. But sometimes copper thieves cut them by mistake, causing outages. Broadband provider Optimum labels some of its cables in high-theft areas "Fiber Only" to deter thieves. AT&T is upgrading its network to fiber in many places.

In June, cuts to Charter fiber-optic lines in Van Nuys, Calif., disrupted connectivity to more than 50,000 residential and 500 business customers including a military base, emergency 911 services and hospitals for as long as 30 hours. The culprits didn't score any copper. No one was arrested, according to a Charter spokeswoman.

"We call that domestic terrorism because we really believe it is," said Tom Monaghan, executive vice president of field operations at Charter.

This year, 14 states enacted new laws to crack down on copper theft. Some, like California and Texas, target scrapyards in an attempt to weed out bad actors and require them to collect data on copper sellers.

Company investigators and local law enforcement drive by recycling yards piled with junk metal, looking for signs of stolen copper. Sometimes it is obvious: large tubular casings left behind on a nearby sidewalk. Other signs are subtle: ground covered with powdery insulation from the lines.

After a theft, companies post information to an online database detailing what was stolen, how much and from where. Scrap dealers can then raise an alarm if they are offered copper that matches the description of stolen material.

Between 10 and 15 thefts are reported to the database every day, said Todd Foreman, senior director of law-enforcement outreach at the Recycled Materials Association, the trade group behind the database. In July, law enforcement in Indiana recovered $18,000 of telecom wire because a scrap dealer used the database, he said.

Alcutt said he doesn't feel a lot of progress, despite the rise in arrests. "A lot of these guys," he said, are "just going back out and doing the same thing."

Write to Katherine Sayre at katherine.sayre@wsj.com and Patience Haggin at patience.haggin@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 29, 2025 05:30 ET (10:30 GMT)

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