The Stolen Military Vehicles Story

                                                The Stolen Military Vehicles Story

                                                                      1996

                                This is a true story about how we almost became involved

                                          Written 3/2011 and Re-written 05/02/2016

                                                               Howard Yasgar

                                                          

 

    This true story is about how our company almost got ourselves involved in one of the biggest military vehicle theft cases of 1996.

    We had no idea of how deeply involved we were until all the people involved were put on trial, and a copy of the prosecutions evidence was made available to one of the defendants.

    Our government encourages companies to bid on buying its excess military vehicles.

    This practice has spawned an entire market of “Collectors” People that buy used military vehicles, and rebuild them like new.

    Many of the military vehicle collectors are former soldiers who buy and restore vehicles similar to the ones they themselves drove when they were in the service.

    The military vehicle collector market is big, and there are several magazines that are devoted to it.

    These collectors have clubs, they have shows where they display their vehicles, and compete with each other.

    The rebuilding of military vehicles  not only involves collectors and reenactors, there is a big market for vehicles needed by military museums.

    And last but not least are the foreign governments that use U.S. military vehicles. They are always in the market to buy good used or rebuilt U.S. military vehicles.

    The point is, there is a very big market for U.S. government vehicles, from individual collectors, museums, and foreign governments.

    Any one that can get their hands on some used U.S. Military vehicles, usually has no problem selling them.                     

    One day I was reading a vehicle collector magazine and I saw the name “Tony’s Surplus”. he was located In St Paul Minnesota.

    I was curious  as to what he did so I called him up.

    The fellow that answered the phone said his name was Tony Piatz, and he was the owner of Tony's Surplus. Tony said everyone just called him “Tanker Tony”,  because he collected and rebuilt military tanks.

    It sounded fascinating, I wanted to hear more about what Tanker Tony did.

    Tony told me his regular business was moving house trailers, but he also did several other things.” He said that he liked to restore old military tanks and trucks, I wondered where he got them.

    Tony said he bid on government contracts to clean up firing ranges on fort McCoy.

    It seems that the government has practice firing ranges where helicopters practice shooting at

army vehicles.

    Tony said the government puts old tanks and trucks on the firing ranges and the helicopters fire rockets into them, pounding the vehicles into the ground.     

    Tony said when he gets a contract to clean up the ranges, the remains of the vehicles were now his.

    He said some times he digs up 3 or 4 old tanks, and he is able to make one good one out of all the junk parts.

    As a matter of fact, he said he was repairing a M46 tank right now.

    Talking to Tony was fascinating. He said the M46 tank he was working on had 2 live missiles

in the engine compartment when he cleaned it out. He said he buried them on a piece of property he owned.

    The more I talked to Tony, the more interesting it got. Tony said he owned an underground  missile site, and he intended to make a military vehicle museum out of it and charge admission.

    The more I talked to Tanker Tony, the friendlier we got.

    One day there was an auction held, a military parts company was disposing of old inventory.

    In the auction was a full trailer load of DUKW parts, that’s the old army duck.

    I bought the entire trailer load for $7000.00, and because the trailer was in Minnesota near Tanker Tony, he offered to pick it up and temporarily store it in his underground missile site.    

    Several weeks later, Tony called me up to ask if we were interested in buying some military vehicles.

    I asked Tony what he had, and he said that he was buying a whole variety of vehicles from the Fort McCoy army base in Wisconsin.

    He said that all the vehicles were destined to be put on the firing ranges to be shot at, but the ranges had been closed down and Tony was now allowed to purchase the vehicles rather than have the government send them to the scrap yard.

    Tony said he was just now hauling off all the vehicles from Fort McCoy as we spoke.

    Tony said he had a legal bill of sale for all the vehicles from the government.

    So I asked Tony if he had a list made up of what vehicles he had available and he said he did, and he  would fax it to me.

    When we looked the list over we were very surprised as it contained a big variety of vehicles which included Jeeps, shop vans, and three M113A2 personnel carriers.

    When I saw the M113A2 personnel carriers, I immediately brought it to the attention of Henry Moed who was a semi-retired military vehicle specialist that worked with us.

    Henry knew a lot about heavy military vehicles, and he said he thought we could sell the M113A2 personnel carriers to either the country of Pakistan or to Chile.

    M113A2 was probably the most popular troop carrier in the world.

    So I quickly called Tony back and asked him the price for the three M113A2 vehicles.

    Tony said, “I want $33,000.00 each for them.”  So I asked him what condition the vehicles were in, and “He said they were just like new, and they even had Tow missile launchers attached to the top of them,”

    Then Tony said, “I’m thinking of removing the Tow missile launchers from the vehicles.”

    I asked him, why he would do that as it reduced the value of the vehicle. Tony said, It was because he thought that the tow missile launchers looked too menacing”.

    I told Tony, not to remove the missile launchers, but he became adamant that he was going to do it anyway.

    I told Tony we would purchase the Tow launchers separately if he actually took them off.

    Tony then said, “He had also bought 28 ea. M151A1 Jeeps that were all just like new, and  all

had  low mileage.”

    Tony said, “If we wanted them they were $1,500.00 each.”

     I told Tony that we were pretty sure we wanted the M113A2 Personnel Carriers and I would like to buy all the M151A1 Jeeps.

     But I told Tony we had to find an economical was of shipping them to Florida first.

     I told Tony to give us a day or so to try and make shipping arrangements.

     I then spoke again to our specialist Henry Moed regarding the M113A2 personnel carriers and he said he would call his friend Knut Barth, who did business with the Chilean Army.

     After the call, Henry said Knut was sure the government of Chile would buy them all.

     I then spoke with my wife Katherine, and I asked her to find a way to ship the 28 jeeps to

Miami.

     So now Katherine started working on the project.

     She first called the railroad, to see if we could ship on a flat car.

     After working on the problem all day, she decided that the best way to bring the Jeeps to Florida was on a car carrier and the cost was $900.00 per vehicle.

    Then we realized that we had another problem, where to store the Jeeps once they were in Miami.

    We knew that the local population in Miami would steal the parts off them if we left the Jeeps outdoors.

    So the bottom line was, that after paying for the Jeeps plus the freight and storage costs, there was not enough profit to be made.

    Henry’s friend Knut Barth told him that the M113A2 personnel carriers were a bargain and we should buy them immediately, he was certain he could sell them to the country of Chile.

    I called Tony Piatz back and told him that we wanted the M113A2 personnel carriers at $33,000.00 ea. Tony asked, “What are you going to do with them,”

     I said that we intended to export them to Chile.

     Tony then asked, “If you sell them to Chile, would you need to record the serial numbers”?

    Yes, I told him, we would have to apply for an export license and we would definitely need the serial numbers.

     Tony then became hesitant.

     Both Henry and I  were both listening to Tony on a speaker phone, we looked at each other, we smelled a rat.

     Tony was obviously lying about how he got the vehicles.

     Then Tony said he had a collector customer (museum owner) for one of the M113A2 vehicles that very day and he was going to sell it to him for $35,000.00.

     So at this point we pretty much knew that something was very wrong with Tony.

     All the vehicles we now suspected were illegally purchased, or possibly even stolen.

     I was happy to hang up the phone with Tony, and I was very lucky that I did.

    Next day, I received a call from a friend and customer named George Pretty who owned a company called “Surplus Enterprises” in Sturgis Michigan.

     George said he was buying a couple of the M151 Jeeps from Tony.

     I told him of our suspicions.

     Then George confirmed to me that Tony had sold one of the M113A2 vehicles for $35,000.00 to a collector. So we knew that Tony had not lied about that.  

     After about a month, a very disturbed George Pretty again called me up.

     He said that the FBI and the Governments Criminal Investigative Division, had swooped down on his business and confiscated all the Jeeps he had bought from Tony, and they also confiscated an antique M114 Personnel carrier George had, as well as an HMWV (Hummer) that George was fixing up.

    George said the Government agents told him that they intended to prosecute him for buying and possessing stolen military vehicles.

    George told me, “I’m now nearly bankrupt, financially and I don’t know what to do, I know that I need to hire an attorney.”

    I debated if I should call Tony up, perhaps I could get him to get someone to ship our container of DUKW parts he was storing for us.

    So I called Tony up, and he answered the phone.

    I asked him, what he was doing, I acted like I didn’t know about all the trouble he was in.

    Tony said, “I’m sitting in the middle of my shop, with my head in my hands, waiting for the FBI to come get me.”

    I didn’t ask him why, because  I already knew what was going on.

    I did ask him if he could ship our DUKW parts to Florida. Tony said, “I sold your parts to a collector for cash, I need the money for a lawyer.”

    The next week, it became big news world wide, and it was in all the newspapers, as well as on television.

    They referred to Tony as “Tanker Tony”, and they said he stole over 13 million dollars in vehicles from the government.

    Tony was arrested along with 5 other military and civilian employees at Fort McCoy.

    They also arrested a military museum owner that also bought vehicles from Tony, probably the M113A2.

    Tanker Tony, they said, was the ringleader, and he had bribed the Fort McCoy employees.

    They said that there was 2 military guys and 3 civilian government employees that Tony had paid off.

    The news also reported that Tony had 11 charges leveled against him and could get up to 125 years in jail, as well as 2.75 million dollars in fines.

    We heard that all the vehicles were confiscated and anyone who bought them lost their money.

    Eventually Tony and the other 6 people were all convicted.

    I heard Tony got 5 years in jail.

    But the most interesting part of it all was my later conversation with my good friend George Pretty from Sturgis Michigan. George had hired an attorney, and his attorney got a copy of all the government’s evidence.

    When George read all the evidence, it included a transcript of the governments tapping of Tony’s telephone.

    Every conversation that I ever had with Tony had been recorded and printed out in the evidence package.

    Our friend George Pretty was eventually acquitted, of any wrong doing, but he never got his vehicles or his money back, and this pretty much bankrupted him.

    Interestingly enough, no one from the government ever contacted us, and our name was never mentioned at the trial.

    I think that was a close call.