It's where thieves go to try and sell their stolen copper, but a recycling center in Southern Kentucky is where some crooks are actually stealing the metal and it was all caught on tape.

The break-in this week at Robbins Recycling near Pineville is the second one this summer. The thieves may be long gone, but a daring image of them committing the crime is caught on tape.

In broad daylight this past Sunday evening, two men move a 900 pound forklift, to get one thousand dollars worth of copper wire out of a truck at Robbins Recycling.

"It was like disbelief," said Clyde Robbins.

Disbelief and frustration for the Robbins family, whose recycling business was also broken into in May, when thieves stole several catalytic converters. One man busted his way under a door and handed them off, one by one, to another man on the outside.

"With our own axe, sledge hammer, and beat down our own door, to come in and steal just a few of those items," Robbins said.

"It's getting so bad. We're gonna have to have help to stop this. It's an epidemic," said Bell County Sheriff Bruce Bennett.

Sheriff Bennett hopes the surveillance video will prompt someone to come forward with information.

A new state law requires recyclers to ID people selling metals like copper, but Robbins says that's not stopping private dealers. Police say the copper is laundered through several people. Robbins says it's through that underground trade that the copper stolen from his business Sunday night eventually made its way back to the center within 24 hours.

"When it came back to us, it was in the same bags they stole it in," Robbins said.

But they believe several people made money off of the metal in the process.

Police say Robbins Recycling will offer a reward to anyone whose information leads to an arrest and a conviction of those responsible.