What Happens In Vegas Catches Fire In Vegas

Desperate times; desperate people:

Years of no-money-down car loans followed by sinking home values and rising unemployment has made many people desperate over car payments they can no longer afford. For some, the answer is to ditch the car, report it stolen and collect the insurance money to pay it off without hurting their credit.

Authorities report a growing number of cars dumped in the Great Lakes, burned along remote New Jersey roadsides and driven into canals in California. The phenomenon is acute in Las Vegas, where sharp declines in tourism and construction have left thousands of workers unemployed and broke.

...Tow yards in Las Vegas are filled with the blackened hulls of Mercedes sedans and Cadillac Escalades. The wrecks were pulled from desert hills and city streets by the department's eight-member auto-theft unit, which responds to calls around the clock. Over one weekend this month, Mr. Menzie investigated eight car fires in 36 hours.

"This is a money town," says Lt. Robert Duvall, who reorganized the auto-theft unit to include insurance arson fraud. "Where else can you lose a paycheck in a night?"

The cops hunt suspected arsonists by SUV and helicopter, trying to identify registered owners as quickly as possible. "We see people with singed eyebrows and hands," said Sgt. Will Hutchings, Mr. Menzie's boss. "Some of them still smell like gas."

The trend began to surface in 2007 when gas prices spiked and the number of auto arson claims jumped. In 2008 claims climbed nationally by 6%, said Dick Luedke, a spokesman for State Farm Insurance. In hotspots like Indiana, Michigan and New York the numbers rose 13% to 18%.

...Each year, more then 20,000 cars are stolen in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas; nearly 100 a week are believed to be fraud-related. Detectives say the stolen Hondas and Toyotas are usually sold for parts; some are shipped to Mexico. Other vehicles -- pricey Mercedes and Lexus models, among them -- are driven to the desert and set on fire for insurance claims. If the owner doesn't want to strike a match, the going rate to hire someone else is $500, Mr. Menzie said.

In 2007 police helicopters began scouring the desert looking for plumes of smoke belonging to stolen and abandoned cars. Last year they spotted 398 of them. Pilots call in the location of the wrecks and police rush to the scene in the hopes locating the owners as soon as possible.

...The night before, Mr. Menzie had caught up with the teenager who had burned his girlfriend's PT Cruiser -- at her request, he told police. The boy was suffering from second-degree burns on his face and hands.

Mr. Menzie said getting the confession was easy: "I think he was in too much pain to try and make anything up."