US intercept contraband cars headed overseas

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Most Americans and visitors to the United States encounter Customs and Border Protection agents when they enter or return to the country at land crossings or airports. But CBP also is responsible for inspecting goods leaving the country, which creates a nearly impossible assignment of trying to intercept all stolen automobiles being shipped out of the U.S.

At the Port of Baltimore, CBP scrutinizes several hundred vehicles every day, and on average will find one illegal export — nearly all headed to a particular region of the world, says Adam Rottman, CBP’s director at the Port of Baltimore. He acknowledges that CBP has neither the time nor manpower to inspect every shipping container.

“I’d say 90 to 95% of every one of our stolen automobiles is headed to West Africa.

Alex Piquero, a professor of criminology at the University of Miami, said, “There are people who are stealing cars and car parts to sell them very quickly in the local markets. And then there are people literally stealing cars and putting them on containers and selling them, shipping them all over the world, not just to Africa, but also to the Middle East and to Asia.”

On any given day at the Port of Baltimore, CBP’s manifest of seized vehicles resembles the inventory of a small used car lot: a Kia purchased fraudulently at auction in New Jersey is bound for Ghana; a Mercedes-Benz valued at $48,000, purchased with a stolen identity in Ohio, is slated for shipment to Togo; a $75,000 Ford Raptor inside a container with one or two additional stolen vehicles and boxes of new power tools is headed for West Africa.

Rottman peeks inside one container for which no vehicles are listed.

“It’s supposed to be only household goods in there,” he says. “In this example, there’s at least three, probably four cars in that container.”

Rottman walks to another container opened for inspection.