In Washington, you have to be caught stealing a car five times before you do
any jail time at all.

I don't know why we are so lenient with car thieves. It's not doing them
(usually young kids) any real good at all. We're sending a message that crime
is an acceptable recreational activity- as long as you don't get caught more
than four times.

I once almost began doing business with
a young woman who had a real scam going. (I found out about the scam and
severed the relationship immediately). She and a couple of friends were
receiving stolen cars and parting them out. They had
a group of young kids, crack addicts all, who did the actual stealing. When the
kids brought in a car, they would get maybe $10 cash and enough crack to get
through one more day until they could steal another car. Too bad, they had some
excellent prices on body and mechanical parts. (When I passed my discovery
along to the cops, they said they already knew about the operation. Not too
many days later, they were busted).

The most ingenious group of boosters we had up this way had a real program!
They would steal Honda Accords, take the cars to a warehouse, strip all the
doors, trunks, hoods, seats, etc and then park the chassis out along a public
street someplace. Of course, 90% of the owners had insurance, and the insurance
companies would pay off the owners and then run the chassis through an
insurance auction. The thieves would go to the auction, buy up the chassis for
next to nothing, *get a legitimate title* to the car in the process, and then
take the car back to the warehouse and reattach the exact same parts that came
off it in the first place. They got away with this almost forever, making some
huge bucks along the way. Finally, somebody asked the obvious question- "Why is
the same group of people buying every single stripped out Honda that goes
through the auction?"

They tracked down a few of the cars and discovered that the body parts matched
the VIN number of the chassis....and the jig was up.

Hope you get your rig back soon, and without damage.