Police suspect a couple of salvage yards in New Orleans East of being part of a criminal enterprise dealing in stolen cars, and detectives say the two businesses on Old Gentilly Road didn't even have the necessary licenses for their otherwise legitimate towing and salvage operations.

Police hauled off stolen cars on flatbeds that they found in two businesses out on Old Gentilly Road in New Orleans East. First running a check on a trailer load of crushed cars, they tied five stolen cars to Big Dog Salvage Yard, then their investigation led them to Rick's Towing Yard down the road where they found nine more vehicles Tuesday.

“They’ve been operating as crushers, as salvage scrappers,” said Det. Jason Gagliano. “They’ve been taking the vehicles and crushing them.”

Gagliano and Det. Andrew Packer say the people running this stolen car operation take some parts off of the cars, then they sell the vehicles as scrap.

“They’re getting more money as scrap value than they’re actually getting as parts on the street,” said Gagliano. “Some of these vehicles will go for $300 or $400 dollars a car in the scrap sale.”

Gagliano says they stole a front end loader from St. Louis apparently to use in the operation, lifting the crushed cars as many as 12 of them onto a onto the flatbed trailer.

“And they could get $6,000 to $8,000 a trailer for scrap cars,” he said. 

Police say they expect to make two arrests in this case, but at the moment they aren’t revealing the two men they think are responsible.  At the moment, they say the two guys acting like they didn’t know anything about this.

“They kind of hold their hands up and scratching their heads say they don’t know how these vehicles got into their yards,” said Gagliano.

Gagliano says he doesn't buy that, and says the investigation has also discovered the two businesses, Rick's Towing Yard and Big Dog Salvage, have been operating without state and city licenses.