ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Copper theft is apparently making a comeback. Police say one man reportedly stole $50,000 worth of copper wire.

“We’ve definitely seen a spike in the last month or two,” said Commander Jeffery Barnard, with APD’s Investigative Services Division.

Police say they saw the same white truck multiple times at a northwest Albuquerque transit depot last month. Video shows men allegedly stealing thousands of pounds of copper and causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage.

“Using my experience with this, is you don’t have a high volume of people do it, but you have a few individuals that really spike it up once,” Barnard said. “They’ll do several metal thefts all at one time.”

Cameras later caught the same truck at a local metal recycling center. Police said Robinson was cashing in more than a thousand pounds of the copper. The center passed along the video – and Robinson’s information.

Barnard says that’s how it’s supposed to work under state regulation.

“The company that purchases that, the metal recycling yards, they have to take a picture of the vehicle tat’s coming in, they’re supposed to identify the person that’s selling,” Barnard said.

If the recycling center doesn’t, they could face their own charges and citations.

Affected businesses will also be keeping close tabs on their own cameras. Businesses in an Albuquerque medical plaza went dark Tuesday afternoon after copper wiring was stolen from their roof.

A nurse practitioner told KOB 4 that only five of their fifteen patient room are usable because it caused a power outage. Investigators believe Robinson is also responsible for that theft.