Two brothers steal Pennsylvania Bridge to sell for scrap.
You cannot make up this stuff.
They had no ambition.
They shoulda tried for the Brooklyn Bridge, I tell ya.
Someone already bought it.
Time to embrace the customs of our Arabian kin and start chopping the hands off of thieves.
I guess you don’t want to bridge the cultural gap?
They were going to be sentenced to just parole, but their judge knew a guy who ran a private prison…
This whole story tests my suspension of disbelief.
How dare you encourage people to steal my bridge! I paid good money for it.
Being near there I’ve been wondering ------- was this their first attempt or simply a bridge too far?
I’m reminded of the people who try to steal copper wiring from a substation. Typically, they cut away all of the grounds, leaving the substation with a foating ground, and they get zapped when they try to climb over or go through the fence.
What? This isn’t a window A/C unit, I trust? Because otherwise what the hell am I doing still leaving out broken or retired refrigerators, gas grills and A/C units out on the curb for city pickup?? (I haven’t lately, but if I were to have to get a new one I wouldn’t think it was worth 100s or even 1,000s of dollars in scrap metal!)
Wait - so an A/C system nets $1,500 but an entire bridge only gets back about 3.5x that amount? Meaning, four A/Cs is worth more as scrap than a small bridge? 
Then again, the guy who cited a $1,500 value for the air conditioner was from the police in Little Rock, Arkansas, while this bridge was resold in New Castle, Pennsylvania, about 900 miles away. Maybe there’s an opportunity for arbitrage here… 
Well, copper is more valuable than steel, though I doubt that accounts for all of it. Poking around online, it looks like the commodity price for steel is around $900 a pound, though that’s probably new steel with the alloy set according to the customer’s specs, not scrap. And since they were probably looking to unload it quickly, they probably got significantly less than it should have been worth, too.
Copper, being a mostly-pure metal rather than an alloy, probably retains a larger percentage of its price as scrap. And wiring and pipes are a little less conspicuous than an entire bridge, so copper thieves are probably able to shop around a bit more for better prices.
Holy moly, forget about gold, I’m investing in steel!
[sub]Pretty sure that’s per ton, not per pound[/sub]