Boat Stolen...Thieves Caught!!!

[WahooKing]

It is getting bad in South Fla....Professional boat thief rings are running rampant in Miami...The justice system can not make anything stick...They steal boats in broad daylight from your house...They have the tools to break wheel boots and "breakless chains"....These thieves are very well organized...They either ship the parts to Central/South America or they use the boats in human smuggling...going rate is 15K per person.

Well, it happened to my buddy's 32' YF....Taken while at work...Came home to find his boat gone....Hidden GPS tracking unit saved the day...4 thieves caught and arrested in the act of stripping...boat was a total loss.



A strange event happened to us a couple of weeks ago....2 miles north of Bimini on the bank....We were waved down by 15 or so Cubans...out of gas....no power...so they say....they could not tell us which marina they launch from out of Miami...probably illegals and wanted to overthrow our boat...we kept our distance...we threw them a bunch of water bottles, called the Coastie, and got out of dodge.

[babalaza]

I'm speechless

[Questsportfishing]

both actually.. the boats being stolen and the people coming ashore! we have NO task squad in florida for stolen boats ...all your insurance $, registration money and taxes in a state where there are so many boats ...goes without! Also to put it to you striaight there is not no where enough help for our customs, immagration, or the park rangers at the dry tortugas to keep up with whats going on ... sad to say the guys caught that stole the 31 jupiter were on thier 6th offence...not much more to say than that....

[SLAYER25]

thats insane both cases that is..

[Deep C]

Been going on forever... I had two stripped clean down to the glass in the keys back in the early eighties... As far as "assisting" I do so out of handgun or shotgun range... Like you, Ilet the radio do the work... It sucks...

I see it on "the other" site it seems almost daily. Glad the Contender is three stories up n a rack and I sleep on it when we're out and about... They used to hang horse thieves because they interfered with how people made a living. I think the same rules should apply if they steal a professionals boat... For civilian boat theft. Just chop off an arm or two...

[nautiduck]

Sorry Deep cant do it. The whiny ass Liberals insist that all criminals are reformable no matter how many offenses they have. Penetentaries have become to cozy the only way jail time will ever work is if they take away all of the cozies and put em in a hole all by them selves and make it the hell it should be. But I agree mutalation and public executions should be the norm.

[Deep C]

Sorry Deep cant do it. The whiny ass Liberals insist that all criminals are reformable no matter how many offenses they have. Penetentaries have become to cozy the only way jail time will ever work is if they take away all of the cozies and put em in a hole all by them selves and make it the hell it should be. But I agree mutalation and public executions should be the norm.

Trimming their fingernailas above the elbow would reform em real good too...

Nobody's gotta know...

[blackwell50]

The boat was only like 5 or 7 blocks away from his house

[WahooKing]

A 34-year-old man was rescued from a remote island in the Bahamas Sunday by the U.S. Coast Guard after 22 traumatic days that included his boat capsizing, a daylong swim to land, a diet of discarded food packages and the apparent death of another passenger.
The survivor's ordeal is far from over: He's a suspected migrant smuggler.

''He is in the official custody of Bahamian officials,'' said Lt. J.G. Matthew Meinhold, spokesman for the Coast Guard in Key West. ``He's there getting treatment. He's doing OK, but he was in rough shape. They're working things out for Customs and Border Protection to bring him back to the Miami area.''
The man's name is not being released due to Coast Guard policy, Meinhold said.

The saga began on Nov. 1, when two men departed Key West in a 19-foot boat. They were supposed to return the next day.
On Nov. 4, an uncle of one of the men called the Coast Guard to report the overdue boat. Originally, the Coast Guard was told the men were on a fishing trip, but ''further interviews with family members suggest that their intent may have been to illegally bring migrants into the United States,'' according to the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard began a search, sending a C-130 plane from Clearwater that located the overturned boat about five miles northwest of Cay Sal Bank in the Bahamas. Cay Sal Bank is located in the Florida Straits, between Key Largo and Cuba.

''If a boat was headed south to Cuba from Key West and became disabled, it could have been caught in the Gulf Stream and pushed east,'' Meinhold said.
For two days, the Coast Guard searched 4,500 square miles by air and sea for the missing men. The search was called off the evening of Nov. 6.
Seventeen days later, on Sunday, a Coast Guard helicopter crew on routine patrol spotted a person who appeared to need assistance near the lighthouse on Elbow Cay.

The man told the Coast Guard the boat's engine had problems and began taking on water. Eventually, the small boat capsized.
For a couple of days the two men, wearing life jackets, clung to the capsized vessel until they saw a lighthouse in the distance and decided to swim for it.

The 34-year-old reached the shore, but could not find the other man. For nearly three weeks, the man said he survived by drinking rainwater and eating packages of food he found on the island, a halfway stop that migrants have used on their way to Florida.

The Coast Guard initiated a second search for the missing man, in case he had made it to another remote island. That search turned up empty.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/brea...ry/786961.html

[Jagsare1]

Too bad they found the guy. If history is any indication, they will do nothing to him and release him so he can continue his illegal activities.

Actually, the illegal human smuggling has mostly been diverted to Mexico because it is easier to get to Isla Mujeres than it is to reach US soil now. Typically, go fast center consoles are stolen and taken to Cuba, loaded with illegals and transported to Mexico. The way I understand it, the Mexican authorities call the US, the US goes and picks them up, transports them back to US soil, processes them and releases them...IN THE US! There are scores of US registered center consoles sitting in Isla, all stolen in the US and used to transport Cubans there.

Our immigration policy is clearly broken but may not be as broken as our justice system. Boat thieves are caught and seldom punished. Recent story is that 4 boat thieves were caught red handed stripping a boat. 3 were released with no charges because they claim they were just helping their buddy work on his boat...right.

In October, another thief was caught in Miami. He stole a 30 Grady in Vero, stripped it and dumped it near his house. Then he stole a 35 Everglades, stripped it and dumped it near his house. He was in the process of stealing a 25 Hydra-Sports and was caught. When they searched his house and his girlfriends, they found a virtual warehouse of boat parts all neatly seperated by the stolen boat it came off of. He was doing all this work in his and his girlfriends front yards in plain view of his neighbors, none of which would report the activity to the police. I am told, can't confirm, that this is the same guy that was all over the internet as having stolen other boats. Obviously, he wasn't appropriately punished the first time.

Since the judges will not do their job, the politicians in the state of Florida need to mandate extremely stiff minimum sentencing. I sent a letter to that effect a month ago to Jim King...with no response.

By the way, my new 31 Cape Horn was stolen October 12th, found 2 days later stripped.