Catalytic Converter Kingpin Wants His Cash Back
Brennan Doyle, the 32-year-old former Uber driver who prosecutors say became the ring leader of a $20 million Lake Oswego-based catalytic converter trafficking ring, wants his money back.
When police raided his rental house on the shore of Oswego Lake last August, they seized nearly $40,000 in cash—as well as two Apple computers and an iPad. It followed a months-long investigation of the operation, which sold 40,000 allegedly stolen catalytic converters to East Coast buyers. Doyle was arrested and charged with racketeering.
Doyle is now working on a Vancouver, Washington car lot, according to court fillings. Late last year, Doyle’s lawyer petitioned Washington County Circuit Court to return the money, arguing police didn’t couldn’t prove it was contraband or illegal proceeds.
Beaverton police detectives disagree, and they’ve recently filed legal documents backing up their claims that the cash was going to be used to finance the purchase of stolen catalytic converters—and charged Doyle with 30 new counts of unlawful scrap dealing based on new evidence seized during the raid.
Brennan Doyle’s paid his childhood friend, Benjamin Jamison, to do the actual buying and selling of the catalytic converters, they claim. Jamison lived in the lake house with Doyle, and was overheard on a wiretap talking with a potential seller about “needing to get money from the safe.”
According to an affidavit filed earlier this month by Beaverton Police Detective Patrick McNair, Doyle and his associates used a Chase bank account registered to Brennan Doyle Industries, LLC. Photos included in the affidavit show Jamison, Doyle’s housemate, business associate and childhood friend, withdrawing money from the bank account. The cash was then brought to the lake house safe and then used to pay middlemen for stolen catalytic converters, according to detectives.
The catalytic converters were then sold to a New York buyer, police claim, and the proceeds wired back to the Brennan Doyle Industries bank account. That buyer, Adam Sharkey, turned around resold the scrap to two brothers in New Jersey, Navin “Lovin” Khanna and Tinu “Gagan” Khanna, who are themselves currently trying to stay out of jail, according to an indictment.
The brothers were released by a New Jersey judge last year, but California prosecutors are trying to return them to custody, arguing that the two “are driving and enabling a market that has become gang controlled and deadly.”
A middleman and associate of the Khannas was overheard on a wiretap saying he was picking up a load of catalytic converters from a Mexican cartel. “Let’s put it like this, the Mexican cartels love me,” allegedly hely said, according to prosectors.