If you think about it the yard owner actually strengthened the case against the perps. Scrapyards generally don’t give cash over a few bucks so somebody signed a name and got a check.
He was 15, lied about his age and enlisted in the Merchant Marines.....served about 6mths before they discharged him. But he did see action.
The only time I brought scrap to a dealer, they made a copy of my driver’s license, inspected and weighed the stuff (brass and copper), gave me a slip, and I fed that into an on-site ATM machine which doled out the cash. That was the only ATM I ever saw that had $100 bills in it.
So, yes, they do keep track of who brings them stuff.