CHICAGO — When Chicago police picked up Christian Buie and Harold Wade with a van full of stolen catalytic converters on the North Side in 2015, prosecutors charged them only with felonies and ultimately put them on probation.
Buie, Wade and a third man received far less favorable results this week in Pennsylvania on similar charges: prison sentences of 5 to 15 years.
Early last year, Pennsylvania authorities said so Buie, 32, Wade, 30, and Antonio Johnson, 43, traveled from Chicago to Pittsburgh in December 2022 to steal more than $200,000 worth of catalytic converters from vehicles.
The men engaged in a lengthy catalytic converter theft while driving a rented Porsche Panamera and an SUV. But instead of stealing catalytic converters from cars parked on residential streets, the group went to car dealerships and stole the catalytic converters from vehicles for sale. They also targeted towing services, officials said.
35 catalytic converters from Mitsubishi Outlanders were stolen from a chain of dealers. Total damage: $124,000. Another $20,000 worth of catalytic converters were stolen from tow trucks.
Investigators in Pennsylvania discovered that two women from Chicago had rented a Porsche and an SUV that had been seen near the catalytic converter thefts. Authorities searched cell phone tower records near the dealerships for activity from Chicago phone numbers and identified Buie, Wade and Johnson as the prime suspects, officials said.
Pennsylvania investigators later placed a GPS tracker on a vehicle they suspected the crew used to commit additional catalytic converter thefts in Pittsburgh. The tracker pinged near several locations where catalytic converter thefts were reported.
When police arrested the three men during a traffic stop in January 2023, they allegedly found seventeen catalytic converters in their SUV.
Speaking on Friday was Westmoreland County (PA) District Attorney Nicole Ziccarelli announced that all three men will serve 5 to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to running an organized theft ring.
In total, the group was responsible for more than $300,000 in thefts and damage, prosecutors said this week, saying the crew carried out “one of the more sophisticated and elaborate organized thefts we’ve had.”
“This is not a mistake or a one-off; these three are greedy people who did this for financial gain,” prosecutor Adam Barr told the judge, citing Buie and Wade’s arrests in Chicago in 2015 as evidence of their criminality.
