AS crimes go it isn't sophisticated - but it is becoming highly profitable for two good reasons.
I'm talking about the theft of metal which is reaching all-time record levels as world prices soar.
We're told the rapid rate of industrial growth in China is playing a major part in all this because that nation's demand for iron, steel and all sorts of other metals is almost insatiable.
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And it is not only share-dealing readers of the Financial Times who have woken up to the fact that when demand exceeds supply prices shoot up.
In East Lancashire last year we had church roofs and other public buildings being stripped of lead and the mysterious disappearance of copper cable which temporarily left the new Royal Blackburn Hospital without power.
And now we hear that crooks have been helping themselves to metal cables from railway lines and sidings throughout the North West.
In fact the amount of cable stolen in the region between April and December last year is said to have directly led to the cancellation of 197 trains and delays on others which add up to 351 hours.
Something has got to be done about this. Train operators and Network Rail already have enough excuses in their handbook for delays and cancellations.
Only this week, for example, I used an East Lancs service where dozens of passengers on their way to work were told they had been left waiting in the rain for more than an hour after the previous train was taken out of service "because someone had been sick".
British Transport as well as Lancashire police are working hard to try to catch offenders but they obviously cannot guard every large lump of metal that now has the same resale value as a watch or piece of jewellery.
The solution then surely is to deal with the scrap dealers who enable so many crooks to get rich quick.
A TV investigation in the past week showed a reporter dressed like a ruffian turning up at several scrap yards in the Midlands with items ranging from road signs (proper signposts with the names of villages on them) to a bus shelter and bus stop on the back of a lorry.
No questions were asked and he was paid in cash for his efforts after giving the dealer a laughably-obvious false name and address.
So how do we deal with the problem.
Scrap dealers should first be obliged by law not to pay cash but to only use cheques or other paper (and traceable) forms of money transfer like so many other businesses use.
And they should have to record on CCTV any items above a certain value and the people selling them.
If they don't follow these rules they should lose the licence to deal in scrap without which they would not be able to operate.
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