Solar Panels Attracting Some Shady People

It's one of the newer crimes under the sun. Security companies are scrambling to stop thieves from taking ... solar panels. Sunny places, it turns out, attract shady people.

So as well as catching the sun, CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports, one solar unit in California's Napa Valley is being armed with cameras and motion detectors to catch a thief.

"These guys are coming in at night, they're grabbing these panels and whether they're walking out of the areas where they are or driving their cars in and loading them up real fast, they're able to get them out with one or two people," says Napa County deputy sheriff Jon Thompson.

Thieves have plenty of targets in California, where there are more than 52,000 solar installations. Each three-foot by four-foot panel costs $1,000 or more. Schools in Pleasanton have had solar panels torn from the roof five times. Twenty-four panels disappeared from a hardware store in Sebastopol. Wine country has been hit hardest.

In Napa Valley, the vines are what make the money, but increasingly vineyards have discovered that the same sun that produces grapes in valuable in producing electricity. And the thieves have discovered the value in these, too.

Michael Honig installed 819 solar panels to provide all the power his winery needs. One morning he discovered 40 panels gone. "I was dumbfounded," he says. "It's like, who would take solar panels?"

At least a dozen Napa wineries have lost panels worth a total of $400,000. Some places have been hit twice, including Honig's winery.

"It's an epidemic right now of theft," he says.

Finally Honig put in security cameras. The next week there was a hand across the lens then shadowy figures among the panels. Three men were caught and are now in jail.

Police think some of the stolen panels may go to indoor marijuana growers who are big users of electricity. And with growing demand from builders for solar panels there appears to be a black market in this green technology.