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Car owners who want to dump their vehicles and collect from their insurance companies can sometimes go directly to a salvage yard for assistance. A Passyunk operator explains how it works: "Say you got a guy who can't keep up the payments on his car. You call me, the junkyard, and I'll tell you to leave it in a parking lot somewhere with the keys, as well as the title for my own protection. I give you a coupla hundred dollars, I sell the parts to a body shop, and they get resold to an insurance company. Meanwhile, the owner comes by to pick up his title and then report the car as stolen."
Some of the area's honest operators know where skeletons are buried, but they're not talking. "You snitch on people down here and no one will deal with you anymore," says Tom, a young, lanky employee with Patrick's Used Auto Parts, who refuses to divulge his surname. "I'd hate to come in next week and find our junkyard burned to the ground. Some of the people down here are pretty scary."
Among suppliers in Bucks County, few were as intimidating as Wills. "Mark could pick up 400 lbs. with one hand," says Palamarchuk, who was always fearful of Wills. Still, Wills mastered the one-eyed thief's cardinal rule: swipe, dismantle and dispose of one vehicle at a time. That ensures control -- and safety. "A good car thief can't be caught," Palamarchuk says. "He can only be informed on."
And that's how law enforcement cracked down. Wills quarreled with a partner, who ratted to the Bensalem police. Government agents then rented the chop-shop property to Wills as part of a sting operation. Over a four-month period last year, the FBI and police tracked 35 cars -- some from as far away as Washington and North Carolina -- into two of Wills' warehouses. Half the cars were stolen; many others were insurance "give-ups" by financially strapped car owners. Not long after, the FBI revealed itself, Wills escaped and law enforcement officers have been tracking him ever since -- with no luck. The case, however, has sparked spin-off investigations that may bag some more chop-shop merchants, including a few ostensibly legitimate auto dealers, as well as "replaters," who transfer identification numbers from junked cars to stolen autos, passing them off as repaired and refurbished.
Wills' cohorts pleaded guilty and most have already served their sentences. "We put more time into this case than those creeps spent in prison," snaps Charles Maddocks, a detective with the Bensalem police. "We slap their wrists and kick them back onto the streets." Meanwhile, somewhere in America, Mark Wills is probably pumping iron, and perhaps stealing cars.