A Portland man was indicted Wednesday on charges of stealing and selling more than 300 cars in the past year, to be crushed for scrap metal.
Carlos Lopez-Torres, 51, faces 117 charges, including four counts each of possession of a stolen vehicle, first-degree theft, trafficking in stolen vehicles and unauthorized use of a vehicle. He also faces 98 counts of making a false statement about a vehicle’s title or transfer.
Court documents state that Lopez-Torres sold cars to a Portland scrap metal processing company, MetroMetals Northwest, from July 2018 through July 2, 2019, and sold about 370 cars during that time, using fake lien paperwork. Police estimate that he made about $86,328 from those sales. He also allegedly removed the catalytic converters from most of the cars he sold, and sold those parts separately.
Although court documents show Lopez-Torres paid others a small fee to steal some of the cars, investigators believe he stole most of the cars himself, using a homemade tow truck that he fashioned with a hydraulic boom installed in the bed of a pickup truck.
Lopez-Torres allegedly found most of the cars he stole parked on roadsides in the Portland metro area, and sold them to MetroMetals.
According to a probable cause affidavit, a person or business has to have a dismantler license from the Oregon Department of Transportation to crush, shred or remove parts from a vehicle.
Neither Lopez-Torres, nor Carlos Towing LLC, the business through which he sold the cars, has a dismantler license, a towing license or a vehicle dealer license, according to court documents. The affidavit also states that Carlos Towing LLC is not registered with the city of Portland.
His next court date is scheduled for Aug. 22.
—Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR
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