Loading ...On nights lit by a full moon, thieves leap from trucks onto trains as they roll through Chile’s Atacama Desert, before throwing 80-kilo (180-pound) slabs of copper to the ground and disappearing into the dark.
It’s a tactic known as “the cat” and the robbers are “moles” because no one knows where they come from or where they hide their loot. What’s worse for the mines that dot the desert, the robberies are becoming more common and more audacious.
Copper trains ransacked by ‘Moles’ in full-moon desert heists