U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped a record 603 stolen vehicles at the ports of New York and New Jersey over the past year, News 12 New Jersey reported, and at a news conference Thursday at the Elizabeth Seaport in New Jersey, the port director said where those vehicles go next: most of the time, back to insurance companies rather than to the people they were stolen from.
Special Agent in Charge Michael McCarthy of Homeland Security Investigations in Newark put the value of the seized vehicles at $36 million. CBP’s Frank Russo, director of field operations for the New York office, said it is the most the agency has seized in a calendar year and the most it has seized at any U.S. point of entry, according to Hudson County View’s account of the news conference. The cars were headed overseas, roughly half of them to West Africa and about 15 percent to the Dominican Republic, said TenaVel Thomas, CBP’s senior executive port director for the Port of New York-Newark.
Where recovered cars go
Thomas said most of the seized vehicles had already been reported stolen by their owners. CBP hands them to the Hudson County Sheriff’s Office or the New Jersey State Police, which work through the owners’ insurers. Hudson County View reported that this sometimes returns a car to its owner but most of the time sends it to the insurance company, because the owner has already written the car off.
That follows from how a theft claim works. An insurer that pays a total-loss theft claim typically takes ownership of the vehicle and anything later recovered, though policies and state rules differ. Coverage of the news conference did not say whether owners in New Jersey can buy a recovered car back, or how many of the 603 went to owners instead of insurers. The Auto Wire reported the same outcome in March, when stolen Jeep Wranglers turned up in a container at the Port of Baltimore and insurance had already totaled one of them…