Police Arrest 37 on Auto Fraud and Theft Charges

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Police arrested 37 people yesterday and expect to arrest another 13 for allegedly stealing vehicles, stealing auto parts, or fraudulently reporting their vehicles as stolen, investigators said.


The street value of the vehicles and their parts was about $6 million, the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said at a press conference yesterday in front of Brownsville Auto Salvage, a Police Department-run chop shop.


The shop, at 257 Hegeman Ave. in Brooklyn, was under operation for 18 months, during which time auto crime division investigators worked on vehicles and met with middlemen who facilitated deals with people who fraudulently reported their cars as stolen – in all boroughs but Manhattan, in other areas of New York State, and in Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, police officials said.


The executive district attorney in charge of the rackets bureau, Christopher Blank, said, “These cars owners are ordinary citizens who decided for a variety of reasons – usually they’ve leased the car and they’re over the mileage and they don’t want to pay the penalty. Or they’ve had an accident with the car and it doesn’t drive right anymore and they don’t want to continue to making payments. Or just sheer vanity, they have last year’s model and they want this year’s model. And it’s time to get rid of the car.”


The owners gave their vehicles – including Cadillacs, Mercedes, Hondas, and Nissans – to a middleman, who brought them to the police chop shop. The owners then reported the vehicles as stolen and cheated 12 insurance companies, including Allstate and Geico, police said. One of those arrested was Frank Rodaligo, a reputed mafia associate who ran a steal-to-order airbag business, police said. Another suspect, Kenneth Rattray, allegedly stole hundreds of airbags over several years.


“I think you’ll see a drop in the airbag thefts,” Mr. Blank said.


Brownsville Auto paid $600 for a set of two airbags, and the seller would in turn bill the insurance companies $1,700, one of the 25 auto crime investigators assigned to the investigation, Detective Scott Munro, said.


The arrested vehicle owners included an accountant, an architect, a public school teacher, a school custodian, and workers from the U.S. Post Office, Department of Probation, and Department of Sanitation, police said.


“The thing that disturbs me … was the blatant theft from us – from all citizens – by citizens in this county and elsewhere who gave up their cars for purely greed,” the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, said.


Yesterday’s 37 arrests come at a time when auto crime, and major crime as a whole, is down in the city.


“The auto theft problem is not as great as it once was,” the commanding officer of the auto crime division, Inspector Howard Lawrence, said.


There were 16,715 reports of grand larceny auto as of December 4, Police Department statistics show, compared with 18,951 at the same time in 2004, representing an 11.8% drop.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use