https://www.kltv.com/2024/04/27/texa...rn-tournament/

boats,motors,fishing equipment?.....

Probably a couple boat bulls and some motors. Everything else is too hard to trace.

Link doesn't work, did they pull the story?

I'd bet it was electronics... You hear of a stolen boat here and there... Never just a motor... Can't trace props, rods or reels... Enter a serial number from an depth finder and bingo... Dan

Great question…

I think I would fully expect Fork to get carded as well….

maybe they found my zebco 33 that was stolen

300 boats????? Really!

doesn't take much to get to 100K today...

That too good to be true deal on a front looker was not a good idea

guy on another forum posted this....sounds like good explanation...

Quote Originally Posted by barbarian View Post
My guess is not stolen but phony registrations. Article said motors and trailers. Texas can be extremely difficult getting everything titled and registered when buying used especially older stuff with sloppy paperwork. I’ve bought at least 3 over the last 20 years that the boat trailers were titled some time in their life as home made. That used to be a loop hole to get around paper and weight issues that I think has been plugged. Texas motors are titled but very few surrounding states require that so I was told by an agent that I wouldn’t believe how much funny business goes on trying to get motors titled. The state could and probably would for PR reasons classify any of these trailer and motors as stolen. Most likely they aren’t, but that wouldn’t be newsworthy. Just my opinion on the very limited info in the article. Or heck, 1 stolen bass boat found is almost the whole $100,000 found.

I am sure the state is looking to collect some taxes too..

That would be my guess too. Bunch of folks don't do the paperwork correctly or at all to avoid the sales tax on the boat and motor. You can fudge the trailer value on the bill of sale to pay minimal tax on it.

I was thinking the same thing. I suspect that there are tons of non titled motors that were legitimately purchased on titled and registered hulls of older boats. If the whole purpose of all this is to target those types of things, I'm not a fan of that. Finding legitimate stolen property is a whole other thing. Of course I'm all for law enforcement doing that, but the best way to do that is to actually investigate at the time of the theft which almost no law enforcement agency does anymore.

Louisiana for years didn't require titles on outboard motors, thieves could sell the motors in Louisiana like hot cakes.

Whether you agree or not with their actions it's a good reminder to get your boat paperwork and records in order if tgey are not.

You can do that in Texas until the police or game warden runs the serial number and it comes back stolen.

They had 4-5 “Fish Police/mr Green Jeans” at The Pavillion ramp Friday as everyone was trying to get out of the water.
They asked for boat registration card and were checking vin numbers on boat/motors/trailers as we were all pulling out of the water trying to get strapped down and out of the way…..they didn’t check anything else.

The paper made it sound like they did some great job finding $100k in stolen boat/motors? That’s really nothing in todays market prices

The rookie inspecting my boat didn’t even know where to look for the motor vin, so I had to stop strapping the boat down and show him, then he asked where the vin was on the boat….so I showed him that too…

I asked him if this was his first week on the job….we both laughed and he said he was pretty new
Glad they recovered some stuff, but for that many boats, $100k isn’t much

Glad they nailed the scofflaws trying to skirt their financial responsibilities to the state... ... I'm just glad I live in a state that makes it easy. Boat and motor are registered as one, just show that you paid state taxes when you bought the boat... Registering the trailer is optional in Tennessee. And in Ohio, all you need is the trailers MSO or previous registration... Dan

Actually stolen motors is big. I was in FL a few years ago and was talking with a guy who had his stolen.The thieves do it during hurricanes in storage places.

In Arkansas the trailer is titled but not the boat or motor. Just registration for boat and motor as one unit.

Louisiana used to be pretty loose on all this stuff. I knew of someone that bought a boat and trailer out of an estate sale and they were given the paper work for it all; obviously unsigned. They took the paper work to the local DMV office and asked what to do and they were told it would have to be signed by the previous owner which obviously wasn't going to happen. The guy at the DMV office they were dealing with told them to step out in the hall the guy that owned it all just might be standing out there and he was. They scribbled a signature on it all and the DMV ran it through.