According to investigators, Dylan Cruz Berry and Joseph Victor Drummen stole platinum worth $71,000 from the USNS Guadalupe, a replenishment vessel which provides fuel, fleet cargo and stores to other ships at sea.
Cathodic anodes are used to control the corrosion of a metal surface, by connecting it to another 'sacrificial metal,' which corrodes instead.
Berry and Drummen, who worked for Vigor Industrial, are accused of cutting the steel and platinum anodes from the USNS Guadalupe, and taking the platinum.
A grand jury indicted Dylan Cruz Berry and Jozeph Victor Drummen
Posted by KOIN 6 on Friday, 14 August 2015
The cost to Vigor Industrial of five replacement rods was $71,000; according to police the final cost of the theft will be much higher, because of the cost of labor and the value of platinum
The pair, who were indicted last week by a grand jury in Multnomah County, Oregon, on counts of theft, burglary and mischief, were apprehended after police traced the platinum to a pawn shop in Vancouver, Washington.
According to the shop's records, the platinum had been sold by a man calling himself "Jozeph Dummen," leading police to the arrest of Drummen, a painter with Vigen Industrial, and Berry, his former colleague at the shipyard, who was also recorded entering the store with platinum.
