Who Says CBP Doesn't Care About Outbound Enforcement?
Source: CBP Press Release, January 17, 2006
Hot Wheels – Long Gone Stolen Corvette Recovered
Los Angeles – She’s not as young as she used to be. She’s been missing and abused for 37 years. But after all that time she still has that sleek, curvy, classic body that turns heads and makes the heart race. An icon of American motoring, a 1968 Chevrolet Corvette convertible, stolen in 1969, is being returned to its original owner thanks to a dedicated band of law enforcement officers in California and New York.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the California Highway Patrol (CHP), the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) joined forces in recovering the stolen Corvette before it was shipped from the Port of Long Beach, Calif., to its new owner in Stockholm, Sweden.
“This is a miracle,” said Alan Poster, the Corvette’s owner, when law enforcement officials told him that his car had been recovered. He saw his car for the first time in 37 years at a media briefing held at a CBP warehouse in Carson, Calif., today. Poster was living in New York City when his Corvette was stolen in 1969. Today he lives in Petaluma, Calif., a community 32 miles north of San Francisco.
“You can’t get your kicks on Route 66 anymore, but we got a kick out of assisting in the recovery of this classic car,” said Kevin Weeks, Los Angeles director of Field Operations for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Americans love their cars,” he added, “Customs and Border Protection helps fuel that love by maintaining productive partnerships with our state and local counterparts in preventing the illegal exportation of stolen vehicles.”
The Corvette’s saga began on January 22, 1969, when the NYPD took a stolen vehicle report from Poster. On January 3, 2006, almost 37 years to the day that the Corvette was stolen, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s LA/Long Beach seaport Outbound Enforcement Team along with the CHP’s Foreign Export and Recovery Team (FEAR), and the NICB, seized the Corvette from a shipping container destined for Sweden. The new owner, a Stockholm resident, bought the car from an unidentified seller for $10,000. He did not know the car was stolen.
In late November 2005, the Corvette’s shipper presented the car’s documentation to the CBP LA/Long Beach Auto Export Validation Desk. On December 7, subsequent to processing the vehicle’s documentation, the NICB advised CBP that a stolen vehicle record existed on the Corvette. Following inspection of the car it was held from being exported to Sweden until the NYPD, the originator of the stolen vehicle record, could confirm the validity of the dated record – initiated January 22, 1969. It took two NYPD detectives four days to locate the record, which was stored on microfiche.
On December 23, 2005, the NYPD Auto Crime Division advised LA/Long Beach CBP that the Corvette had never been recovered and the victim had been located. Following seizure of the car on January 3, it was put in storage at a CBP warehouse in Carson, California.
Further investigation is being conducted by the CHP to determine a possible culprit in this case.
Over the past three decades the Corvette endured what car purists would probably describe as abuse – originally sporting a blue exterior and interior, it is now silver and red respectively; the original 327-cubic-inch engine has been replaced by a 454 big block Chevy engine; a stolen automatic transmission, that wasn’t introduced until the mid 1980s, has replaced the original transmission; and the gas tank is missing. The car’s classic design, however, has survived and continues to thrive.
Editor's Note: A photo of the vehicle can be found at the following link:
www.officer.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=28071
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