6. If any one steal the property of a temple or of the court, he shall be put to death, and also the one who receives the stolen thing from him shall be put to death.
9. If any one lose an article, and find it in the possession of another: if the person in whose possession the thing is found say "A merchant sold it to me, I paid for it before witnesses," and if the owner of the thing say, "I will bring witnesses who know my property," then shall the purchaser bring the merchant who sold it to him, and the witnesses before whom he bought it, and the owner shall bring witnesses who can identify his property. The judge shall examine their testimony--both of the witnesses before whom the price was paid, and of the witnesses who identify the lost article on oath. The merchant is then proved to be a thief and shall be put to death. The owner of the lost article receives his property, and he who bought it receives the money he paid from the estate of the merchant.
10. If the purchaser does not bring the merchant and the witnesses before whom he bought the article, but its owner bring witnesses who identify it, then the buyer is the thief and shall be put to death, and the owner receives the lost article.
But that's not how the law works in America. They have to prove the person had actual knowledge the property was stolen or should have known it was stolen. In this case it's easy because they had informants representing the property was stolen and the buyers still completed the sale. That's not always the case and can make these kinds of prosecutions harder. Cars are a little different because they are titled which makes disputes over ownership a lot more clear cut. And how was the refinery supposed to know to begin with? They never touched catalytic converters, they just got the metal powder from DG Auto. DG Auto was paid by wire transfer and from their perspective was probably not much different from any of their other scrap metal suppliers.
The point of punishing the rafinery is for them to figure out next time how could they know if this powder was stolen or not.
The role of companies is to undertake risks in exchange for profit. They have all the incentives and tools to lower the risk they took wherever possible. If company can't be punished for buying stolen goods then there's no risk and society has to take the risk and the costs. Which makes no sense because whole purpose of private companies is offloading risk from the hands of people that don't want it into the hands of people that do.
You cannot accidentally commit a felony - there has to be intent. What you are suggesting would substantially impede legitimate commerce (which by the way makes up the supermajority of all commerce) and would just result in actual fences coming up with fake documentation. As it stands now companies are basically expected to avoid deals where they see red flags around the provenance of the items. In neither indictment is the refinery mentioned as knowingly receiving the stolen metal powder. DG auto is basically the perfect target because they are a high level facilitator of stolen catalytic converters, they have connections to refineries, and unlike street level guys are probably hard to replace in the stolen catalytic converter supply chain. They even had a pricing app (https://dgauto.app) so prospective thieves would know which cars to target.
You cannot but laws around forfeiture are weird. If what you own was involved in a crime it can be forfeitured even though you yourself are not charged with anything. And yes, that includes money too. It's from drug laws but I'd say it would better applied here.
> What you are suggesting would substantially impede legitimate commerce
Maybe it should be a bit impeded if unimpeded led to national crime wave.
The government is ultimately the 'buyer' of the stolen goods. They are the ones that demand the catalytic convert be installed. Government created the risk for theft when they created this black market incentive. They have all the incentives and tools to lower the risk they took wherever possible.
Why not? They accepted $500mil of stolen property. It's only fair to take at least as much from them.
"I didn't know" is not an excuse. If you buy stolen car it will be taken away from you. You pay for your mistake and buying stolen goods is a mistake.