NILES, Mich. — Stealing farm tractors and riding mowers from dealerships is big business nationwide, and often involves the work of professionals.

 

Recent examples include the arrests of a man and woman operating in Michigan and Indiana, and stiff sentences in Texas in connection with close to $300,000 in recovered stolen agriculture machinery.

The motivating factor for thieves is being able to quickly sell the items, with demand on the black market high, said Detective Sgt. Doug Kill of the Michigan State Police post in Niles.

“It’s not hard to move that stuff,” said Kill, an investigator of farm equipment thefts for close to 20 years.

In southwestern Michigan, a 39-yearold man and 40-year-old woman from northern Indiana are awaiting the outcome of charges after being found with a farm tractor, numerous hauling trailers and zero-turn lawn mowers, along with an ATV, golf cart and other miscellaneous items, according to the Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office.

The arrests were made in early August after deputies happened to spot a 32-foot trailer beside some railroad tracks and while they were searching the property, the suspects pulled up hauling a stolen lawn mower, police said. All of the mostly new merchandise was taken from businesses in Goshen and Middlebury, Ind., and brought into Michigan southwest of Grand Rapids.

Police have not released the names of those arrested. In Texas, James Phillips, 38, Ronnie Phillips, 57, Roy Mayes, 48, and Jonathan Reagins, 38, were given a combined 61 years behind bars for their involvement in a spree that began in 2016 with the theft of a $150,000 John Deere tractor.

With help from the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Assoc., police uncovered the members of an organized crime ring and recovered more than $270,000 in agriculture equipment, authorities said.

Kill said thieves are often professionals, sometimes traveling the country hitting specific dealerships or retail chains usually with tractors and other machines kept outside during the night. The higher-level thieves sometimes with help from middlemen are looking for specific items to fill black market orders froma base of customers developed through word of mouth.

“’I know a guy who knows a guy who may have this stuff.’ Word gets around,” said Kill.

He recalled a bust several years ago in nearby Watervliet, Mich., where a barn full of stolen farm-related equipment was raided. “He’d sell the stuff all over the state and sometimes he would take it way out of state, like down in Tennessee and farther.”

He said thefts of smaller items like push mowers on private property are usually “opportunists who take what they can get.” Kill said he’s never encountered an actual farmer buying stolen equipment in any of the investigations of which he’s been a part. Instead, he said it’s another type of landowner wanting a machine for mowing and other maintenance at a much less expensive cost. 

 

According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), riding mowers and garden tractors made up close to 50 percent of the 11,625 theft reports involving farm, construction and other various forms of heavy machinery nationwide in 2014. Loaders and tractors were next, at 17 and 12 percent, respectively.

NICB stated most of the heavy equipment thefts in 2014 occurred in Texas, North Carolina, Florida, South Carolina and Georgia. Tennessee was seventh and Indiana 10th for heavy equipment thefts.