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.