In Southern California theft of catalytic converters from Toyota Priuses has been a big problem. We are on our fourth Prius in 21 years. Our two generation 2 Priuses (from 04 and 07) made it to about 180,000 miles. The converter on our 06 failed at about 160,000 miles. We hid it for a year by registering it at our other house where smog checking was not required. That changed, and we traded it in as salvage when we bought a replacement vehicle. Replacing the converter would have cost $2,500, with most of the cost being the converter and associated sensors. The thefts are connected to unscrupulous repair shops that will pay a hundred bucks for a used converter, no questions asked. An expert chemist could probably recover the noble metals from a converter. There certainly are useful synthetic reactions in pharmaceutical chemistry using, for example, palladium reagents. But I think the simpler explanation is probably correct here; the victims can probably get their converters reinstalled somewhere in town for $500. These days you probably don’t need to be much of a chemist to be a minor drug lord. A few kilos of finished or nearly finished items from one of several hundred specialty chemical companies in China and you just need a distribution channel.
