Air conditioning makes our lives easier and more comfortable, but there can still be the occasional pitfall. With many of them, you can prepare in advance: For instance, it’s good to know
what to do when your AC starts to smell weird, or how to
recognize potential refrigerant leaks the easy way. In many such cases, a little know-how and an
SM Air CareClub maintenance plan will go a long way. However, there are some things that might catch even the best-prepared AC system owner unaware. Like thieves.
Even during the hottest of weathers, AC units might not immediately seem like the most obvious target for the criminal element, given the fact that you can’t exactly just carry them home and plug them in (unless it’s a window-mounted unit, of course). However, air conditioning systems happen to have plenty of copper, and sometimes, that’s all it takes to turn a heat wave into a crime wave.
Copper Thefts Can Cause Thousands of Dollars in Damages
In early June 2026, a group of thieves
targeted San Antonio’s Last Chance Ministries. During the small hours, they expertly broke through an iron fence to steal some of the church’s heavy new AC units and strip others of their copper, causing roughly $40,000 in damages.
It’s not just heavy duty criminals targeting Texas parishes, either. In July,
a bakery in Pasadena, California took a financial hit of some $15,000 when thieves stripped its rooftop AC of an estimated $4,000 worth of copper. However, the more immediate problem was the store’s indoor temperature, which ended up hovering around 92 degrees.
In August, a thief in Rochester, New York was easily identified and arrested, but not before he
caused a whopping $17,000 in damages to the AC system, which naturally broke down. Several older residents of the apartment complex had to be temporarily relocated, all because of a few copper pipes. Canada has also gotten a piece of this particular action: In late June,
a church in Timmins, Northern Ontario lost its AC (and said AC’s copper) to thieves – one of multiple similar crimes in the region.
In September, thieves stole the copper line of the
Greater Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, causing the church’s AC system to crash. This particular crime illustrates just how disproportionate copper theft can be when it comes to the profit for the thief and the cost to the victim: The crime set the church back thousands of dollars in repairs. The thieves, meanwhile, netted the grand total of… around $10.
Some Thieves Are Targeting Residential AC Units
While the aforementioned outlaws have largely targeted business, churches, and big apartment complexes, it appears that residential HVAC systems in individual houses aren’t entirely safe from thieves, either. In July, a man was caught in a surveillance camera
trying to strip copper from a home’s AC unit in Memphis, Tennessee. In May, one particular house in Choctaw, Oklahoma
had its whole HVAC unit stolen for its copper, with authorities specifically noting that such thefts are on the rise due to rising scrap copper prices.
The reason AC systems have copper in the first place is that
the lines transferring the refrigerant between indoor and outdoor units are made of the material. Unfortunately, it seems that thieves all around are increasingly aware of this fact, and are taking advantage of it with little regard to the damages they cause.
With some preparation and planning, it’s possible to address potential theft issues in advance. Consider
covering your outdoor unit with a protective steel cage that renders it inaccessible. Another potential protective measure is to install motion-activated surveillance cameras that will inform you if someone attempts to tamper with your AC.
