Dowa Holdings is a precious metals refiner that began in 1884 as a mining operation in the town of Kosaka, Akita Prefecture. The company specialized in mining kuroko ore, a rare black volcanic deposit found only in Japan and primarily in Akita Prefecture in the Hokuroku Basin. Dowa expanded its domestic mining operations during the early 20th century and began exploring international opportunities for expansion in the 1940s. By 1990 Kosaka Mine had closed and by 1994 Dowa's domestic operations in Japan were suspended "due to economic changes and the depletion of ore".
In 2015, Dowa Holdings established Dowa Metals & Mining America, starting their operations at a refinery in Burlington, New Jersey, some time after. After Dowa evaluated the PRP dust that it received, it would pay its suppliers and refine the dust into chunks in their refinery. It is unknown as to whether Dowa Metals & Mining America performed any form of vetting on DG Auto Parts. The chunks would then be shipped to Tanaka Precious Metals in Akita, where they would be prepared for sale. Between 2018 and 2022, Tanaka Precious Metals' annual revenue increased by approximately 20% to $288 million.


Navin and his brother, Tinu Khanna, were first-generation immigrants from India. Their older brothers owned and operated a wrecking yard and, after working there for a few years, Navin and Tinu began their own business ventures. In 2016 they began a rubber disposal business, in 2018 they began a recycling business and in 2019 they also started a company in the auto wrecking industry under the name DG Auto Wreckers. According to an interview performed by Navin with ACE Finance, none of their prior endeavors succeeded until DG Auto Wreckers; this success was due to finding Dowa Metals & Mining America.
A subpoena into the brothers' bank records corroborated the interview: between March 2021 and April 2022, a total of $224 million was transferred by Dowa into a single account used by DG Auto Parts. A further $175 million was discovered on another account.
DG Auto Wreckers traded in used car parts, including catalytic converters. Initially, the business remained small, with sellers bringing in small loads from across New Jersey. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, the prices of PRP metals rose drastically. In December 2019, rhodium cost $6,000 per ounce and by March 2021, the price rose to $21,000 per ounce, with platinum and palladium seeing similar rises.
The brothers incorporated the business as DG Auto Parts in February 2020 and moved to the Freehold, New Jersey, site. They decided to focus on catalytic converter recycling and bought four decanning machines. These machines break apart the catalytic converters and demolish the cores into dust, which was then collected and sent to Dowa's refinery in Burlington, New Jersey. That year, DG Auto Parts bought a site in Emporia, Virginia, which they named DG Auto South, and began partnering with converter businesses across the US, including Curtis Cores. A neighboring business' manager said "people would come with tractor trailers and drop them off. Dumpsters full of cat[alytic converter]s. They were working 24 hours." Investigations would later reveal that DG Auto Parts did not care whether their supplies were obtained legally.
By 2021, the business had a website and an app for both Android and iOS which showed, for a subscription, the real-time pricing of thousands of catalytic converter codes, submit photos of their catalytic converters for advance grading and pricing and settle on a price prior to shipping their catalytic converters. The codes on catalytic converters identify the make, model and place of origin of catalytic converters, which in turn identify their value, due to variation in state emission laws. As an example, GD3 EA6 denotes a Toyota Prius manufactured between 2004 and 2009; at the peak of the PRP metal prices, its high palladium content could sell for more than $1,800.
As the profits grew, DG Auto Parts began making advance payments in the millions to their largest suppliers, including Curtis Cores, so that they too could provide their suppliers with the highest prices to maximize the supply of catalytic converters.

2020–2022 catalytic converter theft ring


The investigation that led to the discovery of the theft ring began in late 2020 and early 2021, when a wave of catalytic converter thefts struck the Tulsa, Oklahoma area. Police began arresting "cutters", low-level criminals responsible for stealing catalytic converters. The police then attempted to get the cutters to reveal who they were selling to. According to the cutters, one such person was Steven Low Sr., an insurance agent and dealer in catalytic converters. In May 2021, GPS tracked Low's vehicle to an automobile recycling warehouse on Oklahoma State Highway 51 in Broken Arrow.


The warehouse was owned by Tyler Curtis, who was already of interest to investigators: in a February 2021 Facebook Marketplace exchange, Curtis had told an undercover investigator it "does [not] matter where they [the catalytic converters] came from...." On May 2, two days after Low's visit, the Tulsa Police Department stopped Curtis' vehicle, following a tip: an off-duty officer had spotted a "suspicious white pickup truck...with multiple catalytic converters in the bed" driving through southeast Tulsa. A search of the vehicle revealed contraband and other tools commonly associated with criminal activity: a loaded handgun; a small bag containing three grams of cocaine and eight grams of heroin; a bundle of cash amounting to $9,900; and 128 catalytic converters with jagged ends, suggesting that they had been stolen.
The officers then called a lieutenant, their liaison with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding the theft wave. Questioned on where the catalytic converters came from, Curtis claimed that his automobile recycling business which had opened in January 2021, Curtis Cores, had obtained them legally.
Curtis and his passenger were then arrested for possession of drugs and an unpermitted firearm. To legally possess the catalytic converters, Curtis needed a scrap metal license, which Curtis did not possess; however, he said that his father had submitted an application for the permit. It was later discovered that, while he was in jail, he made a recorded phone call in which he asked his parents to remove incriminating objects from the warehouse. Curtis pleaded guilty or no contest in the Tulsa County District Court to the drug and firearm charges, receiving a three-year deferred sentence.
After releasing Curtis on bail, police obtained a search warrant regarding Curtis' seized phone and iPad. On these devices, they discovered a Facebook messaging group including Curtis, a man called Navin Khanna and another called Adam Sharkey.


By September, a team of investigators, led by Brad Staggs and the improbably-named Kansas Core, had identified that the stolen catalytic converters were being transported from across the US to a Freehold, New Jersey, company called DG Auto Parts where the cores were extracted and then shipped overseas.
In December, Kansas Core had obtained a warrant to place a 24-hour surveillance camera on a pole outside Curtis Cores. Vehicles arrived daily, sometimes hourly, full of catalytic converters. Curtis and his employees would then unload the converters, inspect them, and pay cash. Then the converters would be packed into cardboard boxes, wrapped in plastic and loaded onto pallets for transport. The business handled between 5,000 and 6,000 catalytic converters per week. These catalytic converters would then be transported either directly to DG Auto Parts or to Adam, an intermediary in New York.
Several weeks after Kansas Core gained the warrant to surveil Curtis Cores, he gained a search warrant for Curtis's Facebook account. Looking through his account, they—alongside a team associated with the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division in Tulsa—traced the development of the trafficking ring. Curtis had started working at Green Country Auto Core part-time three years before his arrest. Green Country's owner, Dave Edwards, trained Curtis extensively on the catalytic converter recycling industry and described Curtis as "good at his job [and] a hustler."
Between May and August 2020, Curtis found DG Auto Parts and put the owner, Navin Khanna, in contact with Edwards. Edwards would later say of Navin "I didn't deal with that guy [Navin Khanna] much. Curtis dealt with him...I did talk to the guy—just kind of rubbed me the wrong way." Court documents would later reveal that Green Country Auto Core had sold approximately $2 million worth of catalytic converters to them. In late 2020, Curtis told Edwards that he would be starting his own business and that he would be bringing DG Auto Parts with him. Edwards later said of this "I felt I wasted a lot of time on him, showing him the business. Would've been nice to have a little warning, couple of weeks at least. In hindsight, it's probably the best thing that happened to me."


Kansas Core and other investigators started filing for more warrants: intercepting calls made to and from Curtis's phone, tracking the locations of his employees' phones, and monitoring their Facebook accounts. Another warrant authorized a pole camera outside Curtis's home, where he lived with his wife, on a large plot of land owned by his in-laws.
Since Curtis Cores had received stolen catalytic converters, he could be prosecuted in federal court. A regular delivery arrived from Houston, Texas, where the sellers specialized in "torpedo"-type catalytic converters – named for their distinctive shape – extracted from Toyota Tacoma and Tundra pickup trucks.


On March 31, 2022, in Houston, off-duty sheriff's deputy Darren Almendarez was grabbing groceries with his wife, and parked their Toyota Tundra outside of a Joe V's Smart Shop north of the city. Leaving the store, Almendarez noticed that a black Nissan Altima had backed up to his vehicle. Almendarez had worked in an auto theft unit in the Harris County Sheriff's Office and recognized an apparent catalytic converter theft in progress. As he approached, two men clambered out from under his truck and into the Altima, and he told his wife to run away and call the police. The driver of the Altima raised a handgun; Almendarez drew his own; in the ensuing shootout, Almendarez and two men inside the Altima were shot; and then the men fled.
Almendarez was rushed to Houston Northwest Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Not long after, Joshua Stewart and Fredarius Clark arrived at the same hospital seeking treatment for gunshot wounds. Following treatment, they were taken into custody. A third suspect, Fredrick Tardy, was arrested the following day.
Houston police suspected that the three men delivered their stolen goods into a supply chain running through Tulsa. Staggs would later describe the Houston police as "highly motivated, obviously, to go out and take these people down...So we took this detour in our investigation to provide them with anything we could."
A week after Almendarez's death, the pole camera monitoring Curtis Cores recorded a black GMC pickup truck with Texas license plates pulling a U-Haul trailer of catalytic converters. The truck was traced back to Isaac Castillo, a Houston resident. Houston police had already stopped Castillo in February 2022, when he was driving a pickup carrying catalytic converters, discovering an unlicensed firearm and $25,000 in cash. Upon his return to Texas, police stopped Castillo again. Searching the truck, police discovered a box containing $206,000 in cash. Castillo continued to deny any wrongdoing, claiming that the money was a result of selling scrap in Oklahoma.
However, police continued to investigate, and identified Castillo as a member of a "Ley Road gang". Houston police and the Houston HSI alleged that the three men accused of Almendarez's death had been using the Ley Road gang and another gang as fences for the catalytic converters they stole. On July 28 that year, officers from Houston HSI, Harris County Sherriff's Office, Houston Police Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety raided the Ley Road gang, seizing over $484,000, 29 firearms, narcotics, a stolen Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and 477 catalytic converters worth an estimated $11–12 million. At the time, Castillo was not among those detained. The police obtained a warrant to locate his phone, which placed him at Curtis Cores making another delivery.
Shortly after leaving, Castillo was stopped by police for a third time, and this time arrested. Castillo would later tell investigators that Curtis kept $500,000 in his desk drawer and knew the catalytic converters he obtained and sold were stolen. When interviewed, one of the gang's leaders told police that Curtis had instructed him as to what vehicles to steal from.


According to court documents, Theodore Nicholas Papouloglou incorporated DG Auto South in Emporia, Virginia, in November 2020. He incorporated the business as a "scrap metal business" and a "money transmission business". Neither he nor the business were registered as a money transmitting business, as required by the Department of the Treasury and by Virginia laws. Papouloglou received over $12.2 million in wired payments from DG Auto Parts between 2020 and 2021. He bought stolen catalytic converters from thieves in the area, which would then be transported to DG Auto Parts for shipment to Dowa. He also helped DG Auto Parts to buy catalytic converters from other sellers across state lines, including from Texas and Oklahoma, paying for these in bulk cash payments, with the total paid out by Papouloglou being at least $6.6 million.
Despite this income, he paid no taxes on it during that time frame. A federal indictment was filed on March 19, 2024, including four counts; two of evasion of income tax assessments, one of conspiracy to transfer, receive, conceal and sell stolen goods and one of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. An arrest warrant was filed that day. He pleaded not guilty to all counts the following day, however he later plead guilty to the first count of evasion of income tax assessments and to the count of conspiracy to transfer, receive, conceal and sell stolen goods on August 20 that year. The charges have a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment. He is awaiting sentencing, which is scheduled for February 20, 2025.


According to an indictment from July 2022, Tanner Hellbusch, who bought and resold cars and their components, began stealing catalytic converters sometime prior to February 2021. He was identified as a major local source of stolen catalytic converters, either stealing them himself or buying them from thieves and selling them on. At the time he lived with Jerrica Oga-Garo, his new fiancée, in Oak Hills, Beaverton, Oregon; he and his fiancée operated the business from their home, using the property to store catalytic converters and meet with buyers. Hellbusch placed advertisements on Facebook Marketplace looking for new suppliers.
In 2021, Oregon passed a law requiring that scrap metal businesses make a record of all catalytic converter purchases, including the vehicle identification number that they came from. This law also made it illegal to perform these transactions with cash. This led Hellbusch to try and find other buyers, leading him to begin selling catalytic converters through Brennan Doyle.
Doyle began his own business buying stolen catalytic converters from across the Western US in early 2021, with Hellbusch becoming one of his major suppliers. Doyle then found Adam Sharkey, after which he bought a warehouse in Aurora, Oregon, recruiting some of his friends to help him run the business. Jenna Wilson, with whom he had an intermittent relationship with, helped with the accounting, while Benjamin Jamison (who Doyle had known since high school) met with prospective buyers and handled transactions. By mid–2022, Brennan Doyle and Benjamin Jamison moved to a lakefront rental property on South Shore Boulevard, Lake Oswego, Oregon. The property was a two-bedroom house, costing $5,000 a month to rent. They also bought a $15,000 speedboat and held parties at the house.
An officer from the Beaverton Police Department and a detective from Clackamas County, Oregon, provided information that pointed towards Hellbusch being a major source of stolen catalytic converters. Based on this, the Beaverton Police Department began an investigation into the theft ring. By mid–2022, two dozen officers from various entities were surveilling the Lake Oswego property and the Aurora warehouse, however, the department had difficulties proving that Doyle knew he was receiving stolen catalytic converters.
In an effort to help prove this, the Oregon Department of Justice allowed the Beaverton Police Department to wiretap four phones, including Doyle's. Using these wiretaps and freight receipts, detectives unravelled the organisation and discovered Doyle's connection to Adam Sharkey. The wiretaps were so successful because of how indiscreet Doyle was with his dealings, he often called his friends to discuss the shipping of catalytic converters, which included who was performing the deliveries and what they contained.
Over mid–2022, Phillip Kearney, then assistant special agent in charge at the Oregon Department of Justice, began seizing the ring's assets and intercepting their wire transfers. Another alleged accomplice of Doyle, his childhood friend Casey Smith, complained online about how he was unable to access his bank account, losing access to $130,000. Later, Doyle and his alleged accomplices met to discuss whether their accounts had been frozen or whether the incidents were coincidences, and to discuss ways to get around their issues, unaware that Kearney had followed them.
A SWAT team raided Hellbusch's house while police raided the Lake Oswego property and the Aurora warehouse on August 3, 2022, discovering almost $40,000 in cash in Doyle's bedroom and 3,000 catalytic converters at the warehouse. 14 people were indicted by a grand jury, almost all of which were charged with various crimes including racketeering, theft and money laundering. Among them, Wilson, Jamison, Hellbusch and Oga-Garo were charged with theft and racketeering while Smith was charged with racketeering. Doyle was charged with 90 counts relating to aggravated theft, money laundering, racketeering and unlawfully receiving stolen metal, with Hellbusch facing 25 counts under similar charges.
In total, Beaverton police believe that the theft ring stole approximately $22 million in catalytic converters over the approximately two years it was operational, $10 million of which passed through Doyle, with chief deputy district attorney Bracken McKey stating in September 2022 stating that they still hadn't tracked all of the funds.
Despite the fact that Operation Heavy Metal was ongoing at the time, the investigation did not track catalytic converter thefts further than connecting the Sharkey's to the interstate theft ring, thus missing the connection to Oregon.


Downpipe Depot and Recycling was a business owned by Alexander Kolitsas in East Hartford and Wolcott, Connecticut that operated between January 2021 and June 2022. They operated similarly to the other groups, buying catalytic converters from thieves before transporting and selling them to DG Auto Parts and an unnamed recycling business in New York, sometimes receiving over $200,000 per sale. He was assisted by Bryant Bermudez, who started there around November 2021.
One of the thieves, Yanquee Rodriguez, was paid $411,845 between January 2021 and May 2022, for supplying stolen catalytic converters to Downpipe Depot and Recycling; records seized during the investigation showed that he was their largest supplier. Other thieves included in the network were Roberto Alicea, Francisco Ayala, Theodore Roosevelt Owens, Marvin Figueroa and Michael Almodovar. In total, Kolitsas paid thieves $3,345,675 for stolen catalytic converters between January 26 and May 31, 2022.
According to court documents, Kolitsas and Bermudez stored firearms at Downpipe Depot and Recycling and Kolitsas' home. During the investigation, it was revealed that Almodovar had sold approximately $34,000 of stolen catalytic converters to Downpipe Depot and Recycling; in a post on his social media, he described attacking a witness with a knife before stealing a catalytic converter. Several search warrants were executed on June 1, 2022, resulting in the seizure of five firearms, $47,000 from Kolitsas, $20,000 from Bermudez, approximately $8,000 from Downpipe Depot and Recycling and several vehicles.
A federal indictment for one count of conspiracy to transport stolen property and one or more counts of interstate transportation of stolen property was passed down for Kolitsas, Bermudez, Alicea, Ayala and Owens on August 16, 2022. Kolitsas was further indicted for promotional money laundering, two counts of engaging in monetary transactions with proceeds of specified unlawful activity, and possession of firearms by an unlawful drug user or addict. Bermudez and Alicea were arrested on 23 August, Ayala was in state custody and Owens was in federal custody for unrelated offences. Kolitsas turned himself in on August 24. Alicea pleaded guilty on June 23, 2023, with sentencing scheduled for September 5.
A superseding indictment was passed down in November 2023 including Kolitsas, Rodriguez, Figueroa and Almodovar. Figueroa and Rodriguez were arrested on November 15, 2023. Figueroa pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property and interstate transportation of stolen property on October 9, 2024, and was sentenced to 14 months federal imprisonment on 8 April, 2025 to be followed by three years of probation. Rodriguez pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property and one count of interstate transportation of stolen property on June 26, 2024. He was sentenced on February 20, 2025, to 15 months imprisonment followed by three years of probation. Almodovar was arrested and later sentenced in federal court to 14 months imprisonment.
Kolitsas pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property and one count of promotional money laundering on October 7, 2024. He was released on a $150,000 bond and sentenced on 21 April the following year to five years imprisonment followed by two years probation. He was ordered to report to prison on July 14.
Ayala pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property and interstate transportation of stolen property on April 4, 2023, with sentencing scheduled for July 13 that year. Bermudez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property and three counts of interstate transportation of stolen property on April 10. His sentencing was scheduled for July 12 that year, though was later postponed until 15 May, 2025. He was fined $20,000 and ordered to perform 300 hours of community service over three years of probation.


Following a rise in catalytic converter thefts in Weld County, Colorado, Weld County Sherriff's Office (WCSO) began investigating in 2021. This later led police to Elevation Auto Core in Brighton, Colorado. In 2022, the WCSO was contacted by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and HSI. The investigation expanded to the state and federal level because Elevation Auto Core was a part of the larger theft ring, including a business in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Police tracked one of Curtis's employees, Shane Minnick, to Elevation Auto Core on May 2, 2022, after which they discovered that the employee would soon be traveling back to Tulsa. Minnick was stopped at the airport, where a cash-sniffing dog alerted officers to his bag, which contained $500,000 in cash. Minnick signed the money over to the police.
According to arrest papers in the case, undercover officers and confidential informants wearing cameras found they could walk in and easily sell "obviously stolen catalytic converters". Despite changes to Colorado law requiring identification and other personal information to be collected in the sale of catalytic converters, little to no questions were asked in three different sting operations. The catalytic converters were then (similar to the Curtis Cores operation) packaged and placed onto pallets to be transported out of state (most of which were sent to the "east coast" or overseas) or decanned on-site.
Six men were taken into custody in both Colorado and Nevada on December 13, 2022, charged with violations of the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act, Colorado tax laws, theft, and money laundering.


Between May 2020 and October 2022, four men from Minnesota, John Kotten, Justin Johnson, Soe Moo, and James Jensen, managed a theft ring where cutters stole catalytic converters and transported them to Kotten or Johnson or were instructed to transport them to Jenson or Moo who acted as buyers on their behalf. They would then store the catalytic converters in their homes or in commercial properties while they were sorted, categorized and priced, before transporting approximately 90% of their stock to "high-volume buyers based in New Jersey, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New York" using rented U-Haul vehicles and personal vehicles.
The four bought batches of catalytic converters in several states in late 2021, one of which had an Apple AirTag inside of it. This allowed investigators to track the catalytic converter as it was transported in a shipment worth $425,000 to New York. In August 2022, Moo allegedly traded stolen catalytic converters for several AR-15 style rifles and a firearm with an auto sear.
To maintain the image of a legitimate business in case of an audit or investigation, they also bought scrap cars from sellers or an auction. In order to conceal payments, Johnson also sometimes directed the payments to his father, grandmother and a real estate company. In total, they received approximately $21 million in payments using wire transfers, cash, cheques or a combination of methods; $19 million of this was solely across state lines. Prosecutors said that the group took multiple trips to a buyer in New Jersey in 2021 before flying back to Minnesota, with at least three of these trips netting them a profit of nearly $500,000.
Prior to Kotten's arrest, several search warrants relating to the ring were executed in November 2022 by the Sleepy Eye Police Department and the Brown County Sheriff's Office. He was arrested on November 2 during a federal search warrant where two stolen vehicles were discovered. "Hundreds" of catalytic converters were seized from properties in Hutchinson, Sleepy Eye, St. Paul and Madison Lake alongside trucks, tools and over $500,000.
The four were charged on October 18, 2023, for conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines, with all four making their first appearances at a federal courthouse in St. Paul on October 24. Kotten and Johnson were further charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and false statements to a financial institution, while Moo was charged with possession of an automatic firearm. All four originally pleaded guilty, however on December 10, 2024, Kotten pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to transport stolen goods across state lines. In November that year, two other members of the ring pleaded guilty to conspiracy and gun crimes.


On May 2, 2019, Vang Auto Core LLC was started by Tou Vang, who was joined soon after by his brother, Andrew Vang. On May 31, Tou was arrested for the theft of a catalytic converter from a Prius. Between May 2 and October 1 that year, Vang Auto Core was already in contact with DG Auto Parts, with their first transaction occurring on October 1. In the following three months, the Vangs withdrew approximately $460,000 in $10,000 increments. This is likely due to the Bank Secrecy Act, a law requiring banks to report transactions larger than $10,000 to the Internal Revenue Service.
In September 2020, a Prius owner in Davis, California, discovered that their catalytic converter had been stolen. Investigation into the theft uncovered footage recorded by a vehicle on the same street, which showed a vehicle stopping near the Prius during the night, much like how the thieves had stopped behind Almendarez's vehicle in Houston. The vehicle and its owner were identified, and surveillance began. The following month, police stopped the vehicle and, upon searching it, discovered a number of catalytic converters inside. Two men were arrested in connection with this, Dao Xiong and Shaneel Lal. Prosecutors charged the two men with the theft of 64 catalytic converters in eight northern California counties.
During surveillance, investigators observed the two men casing neighborhoods during the day, only to return by night to steal catalytic converters. Investigators also tracked Xiong to the Vangs home on Meadowgate Drive, Sacramento.


The police acquired a search warrant for a phone confiscated from a known cutter in August 2020. In it, they discovered discussions between the cutter and a man called Choy Saeteurn, a mechanic based in Sacramento, regarding catalytic converters. Police then acquired a search warrant for Saeteurn's Facebook account.


With this search warrant, police discovered that on September 3, 2020, Tou and Saeteurn had a text conversation about Saeteurn returning to buying and selling catalytic converters, saying that he was doing so discreetly. Prosecutors later alleged that Tou was buying discreetly due to his prior arrest in 2019. By September 2020 however, he was already under investigation for the interstate trafficking of catalytic converters.
Navin communicated with Saeteurn a week later on September 10 about a need for more "Prius", referring to Toyota Priuses and their catalytic converters. In this conversation, he referred to Tou directly. The next day, Navin communicated with Saeteurn about Tou shipping 300 catalytic converters to DG Auto Parts. Bank records later showed that DG Auto Parts had paid Vang Auto Core $400,000 for the catalytic converters. In April 2021, shipping manifests showed that Vang Auto Core had shipped two crates weighing a combined 4,370 pounds (1,980 kilograms) to DG Auto Parts. In the two weeks following, DG Auto Parts paid Vang Auto Core a further $975,000.
Police began using a confidential informant to sell catalytic converters to the Vangs at their house some time between April and May 2021. Between then and August that year, the informant made five sales of between two or three catalytic converters at a time. On one occasion, the informant told the Vangs that he had stolen one from a Prius that he'd previously targeted. Andrew responded to this by saying "for future reference, don't say they were stolen."
During a conversation between the confidential informant and Andrew following the purchase of two catalytic converters in August that year, Andrew asked the informant to "see if you can cover it [catalytic converter] better" on return trips to the house, as another seller had "brought hella heat over here" not long prior by arriving in a stolen vehicle.
According to police, many of the cutters that sold to the Vangs were also related to the Tiny Rascal Gang (TRG). The TRG was founded in 1981 in Long Beach, California by Cambodian refugees seeking protection from neighboring gangs. Due to this and the fact the Vangs operated the business from home, the Vangs were known to keep at least five firearms in their house and more than 1,300 rounds of ammunition.
One of the Vangs' neighbors, Joe McElroy, came back from work some time in November 2021, finding the street cordoned off by police; there was yellow crime tape surrounding the Vangs house and a tarp covering a corpse on the driveway. Upon asking around, he discovered that Andrew Vang had shot a burglar who had broken into their house. Not long after, he witnessed a "stream" of police entering the house with dogs and sledgehammers. McElroy later said of this "Cops come over and fucked up the whole house...Just ransacked it. Knocking the walls down. They destroyed it." The Vangs moved out within a few days, with the damage said to have taken approximately eight months to repair.
Due to the nature of the Vangs' operation, investigators speculated that the perpetrators knew about their business and targeted their home expecting to find money there. Andrew was not charged for the shooting, as the shooting was deemed to have been self defense. When the Vangs left their home, they looked to DG Auto Parts to help them. In December 2021, the Khanna brothers paid approximately $1.2 million for a house in northern Sacramento on their behalf.
By the second quarter of 2022, investigators already suspected that DG Auto Parts was the hub for the sale of stolen catalytic converters.


A Wyandotte Nation Tribal Police Department officer stopped a rental truck on May 8, 2022. During the stop a detection dog was used to search the vehicle and it indicated that it had found something. It was discovered that the vehicle was carrying three pallets of catalytic converters and approximately $1.3 million in cash. The driver, Robert Sharkey, "provided various mixed narratives to the purpose of his trip, or the source of the catalytic converters and money." The name Sharkey was already known to police in Tulsa due to his son, Adam Sharkey, DG Auto Parts' associate in New York. According to police, the money had originated from DG Auto Parts and approximately $290,000 was destined for Curtis Cores.
Robert was allegedly transferring money to another intermediary, Martynas Macerauskas, in Amarillo, Texas. Martynas was the owner of M&M Auto, a business in Clarendon, Texas who partnered with DG Auto Parts. He would later tell investigators about his dealings with DG Auto Parts, saying "Khanna does not care where the catalytic converters come from, only that he wants the volume so he can keep up with sales to Dowa."
Two days after Robert Sharkey was stopped, Martynas' wife, Kristina, was stopped in Texas with approximately $1.2 million in her vehicle; she told police that she had driven it from DG Auto Parts. In a search of M&M Auto, police found 30 catalytic converters. In total, the Macerauskas' received more than $6 million from DG Auto Parts for catalytic converters.
That same day, the pole camera surveilling Curtis Cores recorded Curtis's employees awaiting Robert's arrival. At approximately 3 a.m., Curtis was informed that Robert had been stopped and that the money had been seized. Curtis then called Adam to inform him. Two days after Robert Sharkey was stopped, Curtis flew to Newark Liberty International Airport and drove to DG Auto Parts while being followed by investigators. When he left, he was carrying approximately $1 million in bags which he then drove back to Oklahoma.
Curtis did become more careful upon returning after the raids against the Connecticut group and the Ley Road gang out of concern that police would link them back to him. He altered how he would buy stolen goods, refused to travel with large sums of money and would routinely check with his wife to ensure the money stashed around their property was safe. Despite this extra care, investigators used a confidential informant who went to Curtis Cores carrying 20 catalytic converters, who told Curtis that he had bought the catalytic converters from "a sketchy motherfucker" who had "just got them from some cars" and, after escaping from police, hid them in a field; Curtis still bought them. When federal investigators later obtained a wiretap for an employee of DG Auto Parts, they recorded Navin on August 5 telling him that traveling with money was too risky and that the police were "busting everybody".
An August drop in PRP prices, particularly palladium, strained DG Auto Parts' finances. One buyer threatened to sue the company for stealing data from the pricing app. There were accusations on their Facebook page that the brothers offered large sums of money for large quantities of catalytic converters and then refused to pay. In September 2022, DG Auto Parts announced that it had secured funding out of its financial difficulties with private investment firm Barrett Edge, who praised the Khanna brothers as "consummate professionals".
Meanwhile, investigators sent confidential informants to DG Auto Parts for months to sell catalytic converters, all the while emphasizing that they were stolen. In a Facebook message, Navin said, "every cat in Cali [is] stolen I can promise you that". Federal indictments later alleged that on September 1, a confidential informant claimed that their cousin worked in a Toyota warehouse and that they could steal catalytic converters and "bricks" (cores that had not yet been put into catalytic converters) from the Priuses stored there. The brothers agreed to the plan, paying $259,000 for 402 bricks and 98 catalytic converters.


By the third quarter of 2022, the investigation into the interstate catalytic converter theft ring was reaching its conclusion. Now nicknamed Operation Heavy Metal, the investigation had grown to include over 70 local and federal agencies. By chance, investigators in Operation Heavy Metal discovered the investigation into the Vang family; as such, the investigation was merged into Operation Heavy Metal. It was later discovered that Vang Auto Core had sold over $38 million of catalytic converters to DG Auto Parts. The case had become so large that agents from multiple different agencies had to meet together in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to coordinate the final stages of the investigation.On the morning of November 2, the owner of a store adjacent to Curtis Cores, Jeremy Jones of JT Auto, was in his office grabbing a cup of coffee when he witnessed the police storming into Curtis Cores. He later said of the day, "I look out the window and something caught my eye—it was like a SWAT team. There's a tank. There's guys with assault rifles and military gear." Curtis, who had left shortly before the raid, returned not long after and was arrested. Six of his partners and employees and his wife were arrested the same day.


Police used a helicopter and officers riding all-terrain vehicles to search unsuccessfully for the money stashed on his wife's family's land where he and his wife lived. Staggs said of this "he probably has money hidden somewhere that we'll never find". Curtis was accused of receiving approximately $13 million from DG Auto Parts for the shipment of catalytic converters.
Simultaneously across the US, police executed more than 32 search warrants on locations used by the various organizations involved in the ring, seizing "homes, bank accounts, cash, and luxury vehicles", among other assets, which were valued at "tens of millions of dollars". In total, 21 arrests were made in five states. Seven people associated with DG Auto Parts were among those who were arrested, six of whom had been involved in decanning and selling the metals to refineries.
The Sharkeys gained approximately $45 million from the sale of stolen catalytic converters to DG Auto Parts and were arrested in New York. Curtis received approximately $500,000 from Capital Cores, a company operated by Adam in Long Island, New York.
Over the course of their investigation, police discovered that Dowa Metals & Mining America had paid $545 million in revenue to DG Auto Parts. Prosecutors said that of the approximately $25 million withdrawn from this sum by the Khannas, only $150,000 was recovered. As such, the Khannas were deemed to be a flight risk if released on bail. Despite surveillance and bank records proving Dowa to be the source of DG Auto Parts' money, the company's name was withheld during the indictments against Curtis and the Khannas, only being referred to as an unindicted co-conspirator.
Lauren Horwood, a spokesperson for the Eastern District of California US Attorneys Office, described Operation Heavy Metal as the first national takedown of a catalytic converter theft ring by the Department of Justice.


Staggs stated that Operation Heavy Metal had drastically cut the rate of catalytic converter thefts, saying "in the four months prior to that national takedown day, there were 250 reports of catalytic converter theft. In the four months after, there were 38." According to the NICB, by 2023 reports of catalytic converter thefts had declined significantly nationwide. In the first nine months of 2023, there were 2,675 catalytic converter thefts reported per month, down from over 5,000 in 2022.
A similar fall was registered in Houston, in March 2022 there were 1,200 catalytic converter thefts reported and on March 31 Deputy Almendarez was killed. The following month the number of reports dropped to approximately 950, falling gradually to 900 reports by July 2022. On July 28 the Ley Road Gang was raided, with the number of reports falling to approximately 400 by the end of the year.
The number of reports stayed steady until May 29 that year, which was when Senate Bill 224, known as the Deputy Darren Almendarez Act, became effective. The act aimed to "provide a framework of offenses, penalties and enhancements", with one of the enhancements being that if a firearm was used in the theft of a catalytic converter, the charge would become a felony. From then, the amount of reports fell gradually to almost zero by February 2024.


The government was seeking forfeiture of approximately $545 million in connection with the case; it is unclear whether they received this amount during the search and seizure efforts.
Adam and Robert Sharkey were indicted in October 2022; Adam was charged with 16 counts including conspiracy to receive stolen catalytic converters, conspiracy to commit money laundering, engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity, and the sale and receipt of stolen goods. Robert's charges were reduced to misprision of a felony on 5 December, 2024. Both pleaded guilty in a federal court in Tulsa on December 9, 2024, with Adam pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy and receiving a mandatory maximum of five years imprisonment. As a part of their plea agreements, both agreed not to challenge the seizure of $1.1 million on May 8 that year in Wyandotte, Oklahoma and the seizure of $38,000 from two bank accounts.
Janice Ayala joined Dowa Metals & Mining America as their Chief Compliance Officer on March 3, 2023. During Ayala's 27-year tenure at the Department of Homeland Security, her most recent role before joining Dowa was as Director of Joint Task Force – Investigations. This agency oversaw the investigation into both DG Auto Parts and Dowa.
Jamison pleaded guilty sometime between the 2022 Oregon indictment and 2024, while Doyle's trial is set for October 29, 2024.
The three men involved in the shooting of Darren Almendarez were later charged with capital murder. The District Attorney's office are seeking the death penalty for Joshua Stewart and Fredarius Clark, while Frederick Tardy, who was 17 at the time, was deemed too young. Tardy was released on a $750,000 bond. The three were awaiting court dates in April 2024.
Northeast Community Center in Houston was renamed the Deputy Darren Almendarez Community Center in his honor in August 2023, aiming to "keep his legacy alive in the very community that he and his family called home."
A superseding indictment was unsealed on March 20, 2024, charging Tinu and Navin's mother, father and older brother, Anita, Nirmal and Michael Khanna with conspiracy to transport stolen catalytic converters from California to New Jersey. The case alleged that, after Tinu and Navin were arrested, Anita, Nirmal and Michael continued buying and selling stolen catalytic converters under DG Auto Parts. The case also alleged that they sold the PRP metals to employees of a New Jersey metal refinery, including Alfredo Mejia and Vishnu Chintaman, via a broker, Ricky Vega, and that they knew the catalytic converters that the metals came from were stolen.
Tou Vang was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment on May 6, 2025.


Rafael Davila operated a group which included Davila, Zachary Marshall, Santo Feliberty, Nicolas Davila, Carlos Fonseca, Alex Oyola and Torres. The group targeted vehicles primarily in Massachusetts and New Hampshire between 2022 and April 2023. He was responsible for the planning of and transportation to each theft using a maroon Acura (which was later identified as both linking the thefts and belonging to Rafael Davila), the determining of the value of catalytic converters and the procurement of supplies.
After the thefts, the catalytic converters would be sold to Jose Torres, who stored those he bought from several dealers and then sell them to recycling businesses. Torres would frequently sell the catalytic converters to Downpipe Depot and Recycling and DG Auto Parts, earning between $30,000 and $80,000 per week from them.
Using surveillance footage and the monitoring of communications and location data from the group's phones and Rafael Davila's vehicle, authorities believed that they were responsible for the theft of catalytic converters from at least 471 vehicles in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, though they also believed that a large number of thefts were either unidentified or went unreported.
Members of the group also conspired to and committed other thefts, including from the ATM machines of three federally insured banks in December 2022, a trailer on December 12, 2022, two jewellery stores in New Hampshire on January 12, 2023 and a self-storage building in Northborough in February 2023, resulting in the theft of a truck and $13,000 in Milwaukee power tools, some of which were recovered from a storage unit alleged to have been owned by Rafael Davila during a series of search and arrest warrants that were executed on April 12, 2023 across western Massachusetts. At its end, the investigation expanded to include 78 law enforcement agencies overseen by the FBI and Massachusetts State Police.
The group were arrested and charged in April 2023 with conspiracy to transport stolen property in interstate commerce, interstate transportation of stolen property, conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit bank theft and bank theft.
Rafael Davila pleaded guilty in April 2024 and was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment to be followed by three years of probation on October 1, 2024; Marshall pleaded guilty in November 2023 and was sentenced to 47 months imprisonment and three years probation in April 2024; Feliberty was sentenced to 57 months imprisonment and three years probation in March that year; and Nicolas Davila was sentenced to 37 months imprisonment and five years probation that month. As of February 2025, Fonseca, Oyola and Torres had also pleaded guilty and were awaiting sentencing, with Torres pleading guilty on May 17, 2023 and his sentencing scheduled for September 6 that year.
In the 18 months that followed the dismantling of the group, nine thefts of catalytic converters were reported.


The women's 400 metres at the 2022 European Athletics Championships was held over three rounds at the Olympiastadion in Munich, Germany, from 15 to 17 August 2022. It was the twentieth time this event was contested at the European Athletics Championships. Athletes could qualify by achieving the entry standard of 51.70 seconds, by receiving a wild card, or by virtue of their ranking.
Twenty-three athletes competed in round 1 on 15 August. Janet Richard set a Maltese record of 53.49 s. The three fastest athletes of each heat plus the next three fastest of the rest qualified for the semi-finals, where they were joined by the twelve highest-ranking athletes, who had a bye in round 1. Twenty-four athletes competed in the semi-finals on 16 August. The two fastest in each heat and the two fastest of the rest advanced to the final.
Eight athletes competed in the final on 17 August. Femke Bol of the Netherlands won the final race in a national record of 49.44 s. Natalia Kaczmarek of Poland finished in second place in 49.94 s and Anna Kiełbasińska of Poland placed third in 50.29 s. Outside the medals, Rhasidat Adeleke or Ireland set a national record of 50.53 seconds.

2022 European Athletics Championships – Women's 400 metres


The women's 400 metres was contested nineteen times a before 2022, after having been introduced at the 1958 edition. The previous edition of 2018, had been won by Justyna Święty-Ersetic of Poland, who returned as defending champion. The 2022 edition was held at the 400-metre track of the Olympiastadion in Munich, Germany.
At the start of the Championships, Marita Koch of East Germany held the world and European record of 47.60 s set in 1985 and the championship record of 48.16 s set in 1982. Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas had set the world leading mark of 49.12 s on 25 July 2022, and Femke Bol of the Netherlands had set the European leading mark of 49.75 s on 6 August 2022.


For this event, the qualification period was from 27 July 2021 to 26 July 2022. Athletes could qualify by achieving the entry standard of 51.70 s, by wild card as defending European 400-metres champion, or by virtue of their position on the World Athletics Rankings for the event. There was a target number of thirty-six athletes for this event. A final entry list with thirty-nine athletes was compiled on 8 August 2022.


Twenty-three athletes from seventeen nations competed in the three heats of the first round on 15 August, that started at 19:35 (UTC+2) in the evening. The first three athletes in each heat (Q) and the next three fastest of the rest (q) advanced to the semi-finals. The twelve highest-ranked athletes received a bye into the semi-finals. In the second heat, Janet Richard improved the Maltese record (NR) to 53.49 s, although she didn't advance to the next round.


Twenty-four athletes from fourteen nations competed in the three heats of the semi-finals on 16 August, that started at 13:00 (UTC+2) in the afternoon. The first two athletes in each heat (Q) and the next two fastest athletes of the rest (q) advanced to the final. Victoria Ohuruogu, Amandine Brossier, and Gunta Vaičule set personal bests (PB) in this round – of these three, only Ohuruogu advanced to the next round.


Eight athletes from five nations competed in the final on 17 August, that started at 22:02 (UTC+2) in the evening. About 200 metres in, Lieke Klaver of the Netherlands was in the lead, followed by Natalia Kaczmarek of Poland and Femke Bol of the Netherlands. After 300 metres, Klaver was overtaken by Kaczmarek and Bol. The race was won by Bol in a European leading time and a new Dutch record (NR) of 49.44 s. Kaczmarek finished second, 0.5 seconds after Bol, in 49.94 s, and she was followed by Anna Kiełbasińska of Poland who finished in third place with a time of 50.29 s. In fifth place, Rhasidat Adeleke of Ireland set a national record (NR) of 50.53 s.
In an interview, Bol said: "It wasn’t until after the race that I realised it wasn't such a close race. I won by half-a-second and with a big personal best. I felt confident and strong." Although she had won international medals before, this was Bol's first international title. Two days later, Bol also won the women's 400 metres hurdles in an unprecedented double at the European Athletics Championships. Afterwards, Bol said: "I am so proud to achieve the double, but I will never do it again. Well, maybe. Never say never."


The 2022 Gasparilla Bowl (officially known as the Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl for sponsorship reasons) was a college football bowl game played on December 23, 2022, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. The 14th annual Gasparilla Bowl began at 6:35 p.m. EST and was aired on ESPN. The game was played between the Wake Forest Demon Deacons from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and the Missouri Tigers from the Southeastern Conference (SEC). It was one of the 2022–23 bowl games concluding the 2022 FBS football season.
Wake Forest scored the game's first points on their first possession after Sam Hartman passed to Taylor Morin for a touchdown, and Missouri scored their first points with a successful field goal later in the first quarter. Each team scored a touchdown in the second and third quarters, though Wake Forest missed an extra point attempt following one of their scores. Wake Forest entered the fourth quarter with a three-point lead, which they expanded to ten points with another touchdown, the last of the game. Wake Forest emerged victorious with a final score of 27–17.
The game was Hartman's last as a member of the Wake Forest team; he officially announced a transfer to Notre Dame on January 5, 2023. He was the game's most valuable player and finished his Wake Forest career having set the ACC record for passing touchdowns. Wake Forest finished the season with a record of 8–5, while Missouri finished 6–7.


The Gasparilla Bowl featured the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), against the Missouri Tigers, from the Southeastern Conference (SEC). This was the first time that Missouri and Wake Forest had ever faced each other. The game was Wake Forest's seventh straight appearance in a bowl and their 17th overall, with a 10–6 record overall. It was Missouri's third consecutive bowl game appearance and 34th overall, and the Tigers entered the game sporting a 14–19 bowl game record overall. They entered with a three-game losing streak in bowl games; their last postseason win was in the 2015 Citrus Bowl.
This edition of the Gasparilla Bowl was the first to feature two Power Five teams, and only three other Power Five teams had played in the game previously: NC State (in 2014), Mississippi State (in 2016), and Florida (in 2021).


Wake Forest finished their regular season with a 7–5 record, losing four of their final five games after starting the season with six wins in their first seven games. They faced four teams ranked in the AP Top 25 poll during the season, defeating Florida State while losing to Clemson, NC State, and North Carolina.
One of the major headlines for Wake Forest entering the game was the impending departure of quarterback Sam Hartman; though it was not made clear before the game whether he would leave for the transfer portal or the NFL draft, it was announced that this would be his last game at Wake Forest. While the passing offense was viewed as a strength, the pass defense was analyzed to be more shaky and largely dependent on the ratio of pass plays to rush plays that were run by the opposing offense. The Demon Deacons defense was impacted by the loss of cornerbacks JJ Roberts and Gavin Holmes to the transfer portal; the latter announced his commitment to Texas two days before the game.


Missouri finished their regular season with a 6–6 record, winning their final two games to become bowl eligible. They faced three ranked teams during the season, defeating South Carolina while losing to Georgia and Tennessee.
The Tigers were without several players due to draft preparations: defensive ends Isaiah McGuire and DJ Coleman both opted-out, as did safety Martez Manuel; these three players were Missouri's top three sack leaders throughout the season. Wide receiver Dominic Lovett did not play in the game after entering the transfer portal following Missouri's last regular season game.
Mizzou's scoring offense was brought into question by analysts, as Wake Forest entered the game with a 2–5 record in games when they allowed over 30 points (in contrast, they had a 5–0 record when allowing fewer) but the Tigers had only reached the 30-point mark three times over the course of the regular season.


The game was televised on ESPN, with a commentary team of Chris Cotter, Aaron Murray, and Lericia Harris. It began at 6:35 p.m. EST. The game's officiating crew, representing the Big 12 Conference, was led by referee Kevin Boitmann and umpire Apollo Martin. Played at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, the weather at the game's kickoff was clear with a temperature of 49 °F (9 °C).


The game began with Ivan Mora's opening kickoff that gave Missouri the ball on their own 35-yard-line. The Tigers went three-and-out on their first drive and punted to the Demon Deacons and gave them the ball for their first possession at their own 15-yard-line. On offense, Sam Hartman found A.T. Perry for a 30-yard completion early on to move them past midfield. Several gains on the ground brought them to the Missouri 5-yard-line, where they scored the game's first touchdown on a 5-yard pass from Hartman to Taylor Morin. Missouri responded with a long, 15-play drive that spanned 58 yards and took nearly eight minutes off of the clock. They began after a touchback on their own 25-yard-line and successfully converted third downs on three occasions before failing to convert 3rd & 13 at the Wake Forest 19-yard-line. On the next play, Missouri scored their first points with a 35-yard field goal by Harrison Mevis. This left 1:46 on the clock and Wake Forest took all but ten seconds with a three-and-out and a punt to the Missouri 30-yard-line. The Tigers ran one play, a 10-yard rush by Brady Cook, before the quarter ended.
Missouri began the second quarter with a three-and-out, as they failed to gain the required five yards that remained and punted to the Wake Forest 37-yard-line following a fair catch. Wake Forest expanded their lead with a second touchdown drive to begin their first possession of the quarter, starting with a 27-yard pass from Hartman to Donavon Greene followed immediately by a 12-yard pass to Jahmal Banks, which reached the Missouri 24-yard-line. They ended up converting on 4th & 1 with an offside penalty against Missouri, and scored three plays later with a Justice Ellison rush. The teams then traded punts; Missouri set themselves back with a false start penalty and were unable to recover, punting on 4th & 16, and the Demon Deacons had to punt after a less successful five plays, though they got the ball back immediately after the punt was muffed by Luther Burden III. They were unable to take full advantage as Hartman threw an interception to Jaylon Carlies in the end zone, giving Missouri a touchback. Missouri, on the other hand, were able to take advantage of this mistake with a 7-play touchdown drive capped off by a 1-yard pass from Cook to Demariyon Houston. Wake Forest managed to convert a pair of third downs on their last drive of the half but ultimately faced 4th & 9 and had to punt; the Tigers reached the Wake Forest 31-yard-line with a 12-yard pass from Cook to Mookie Cooper on the final play of the half but were unable to run another play as time expired with Wake Forest leading by four points.


Wake Forest opened the second half promisingly, with a pair of Hartman-to-Perry passes that gained a first down, though they stalled from there and punted on 4th & 2, giving Missouri the ball on their own 17-yard-line. The teams then traded touchdowns, though in different ways: Missouri scored to take their first lead of the game on a 13-play drive that took nearly six and a half minutes off of the clock, with a touchdown eventually coming on a 4-yard rush by Cody Schrader, while Wake Forest drove 75 yards in four plays thanks to gains of 15 and 12 yards on passes that set up a 48-yard touchdown strike from Hartman to Banks. Matthew Dennis missed the extra point, keeping Wake Forest's lead at three points. After that, the teams traded three-and-outs, with Missouri committing a holding penalty on second down and ultimately kicking it away on 4th & 17, and Wake Forest picking up possession at their own 25-yard-line and advancing only five yards from there before they punted it back to their own 49-yard-line. Missouri was unable to take advantage of the field position, as they committed a turnover on downs after failing to convert 4th & 4 from the Wake Forest 43-yard-line after Cook's pass fell incomplete. On their next drive, the Demon Deacons were unable to find more success, as they faced 4th & 1 before a holding penalty set them back ten yards and sent the game into the fourth quarter.
The first play of the final quarter saw Wake Forest punt to Missouri, with a fair catch setting the Tigers up at their own 19-yard-line. Two passes and a rush by Cook picked up a first down, and a 12-yard pass two plays later put the ball on the 50-yard-line. after gaining 7 yards on their next two plays, the Missouri gained none on their next two, and turned the ball over on downs again. With under ten minutes to play, Wake Forest again failed to move the ball and punted on 4th & 18; the 31-yard kick gave Missouri the ball at their own 15-yard-line after Kris Abrams-Draine's fair catch. A 4th & 4 on Missouri's next series forced them into a similar outcome after a second-down sack took them from needing two yards to needing nine. Wake Forest fielded the punt on their own 25-yard-line and sparked their offense to an eight-play drive that included a roughing the passer penalty and a 15-yard rush by Ellison later on. The drive finished with a 16-yard touchdown pass from Hartman to Morin with 2:33 left on the clock, a play which extended the Demon Deacons' lead to ten points. Missouri's offense was set back by a loss of 12 yards resulting from a Kobie Turner sack, and suffered another sack, this one for a loss of 11 yards by Rondell Bothroyd, on the next play. They failed to convert 4th & 33 two plays later and gave the ball back to the Demon Deacons with one minute remaining; Wake Forest took a knee to run the clock out and secure a victory, 27–17.


Sam Hartman earned praise for his performance in the game and was named its most valuable player. After having announced an impending transfer before the game, he revealed on January 5, 2023, that his transfer destination was Notre Dame. He finished at Wake Forest having recorded over 13,000 career passing yards and a total of 110 touchdowns, an ACC record. He has been named a team captain and the starting quarterback for Notre Dame in their 2023 season opener against Navy.
Missouri's offense and defense both received praise for their improvement over the course of the game; Columbia Daily Tribune said that the defense, in particular, played well for parts of the second and third quarters but struggled later in the game. Wake Forest finished the season with an 8–5 record following their win, and Missouri fell to 6–7.


In September 2022, Australian telecommunications company Optus suffered a data breach that affected up to 10 million current and former customers comprising a third of Australia's population. Information was illegally obtained, including names, dates of birth, home addresses, telephone numbers, email contacts, and numbers of passports and driving licences. Conflicting claims about how the breach happened were made; Optus presented it as a complicated attack on its systems while an Optus insider and the Australian Government said a human error caused a vulnerability in the company's API. A ransom notice asking for A$1,500,000 to stop the data from being sold online was issued. After a few hours, the data thieves deleted the ransom notice and apologised for their actions.
Government figures, including Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister Clare O'Neil, and Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten, criticised Optus for its role in the attack, and for being uncooperative with government agencies and the public. The government announced legislation, including the allowance of information-sharing with financial services and government agencies, and reforms to Australia's laws on security of critical infrastructure to help the government act in the event of future breaches. In response to the data breach, Optus agreed to pay for the replacements of compromised passports, commissioned an external review, and gave seriously affected customers a subscription to a credit monitoring service. Optus also apologised for the breach. Customers criticized Optus for not being responsive and providing inadequate responses to those affected. As of June 2023, investigations into the breach and a class-action lawsuit from affected customers were ongoing.


Optus, an Australian telecommunications company owned by Singtel, was founded in 1981 with the formation of the government-owned satellite-communications company AUSSAT. AUSSAT was privatised in 1991 and sold to a consortium that included Mayne Nickless and AMP. In 2022, Optus was Australia's third-largest telecommunications company with a 13.1% market share. In September 2022, Optus had around 10 million customers, comprising more than a third of Australia's population of around 26.12 million people.


On 20 September 2022, Optus's technical team noticed and investigated suspicious activity on its network. The next day, Optus's systems were found to have sustained a data breach and regulators were informed. On 22 September, the company publicly announced the data breach and informed news agencies. Optus advised the public to be vigilant for potential fraudulent activity but stated it did not know whether the breach had caused any harm to customers. Optus did not state how many customers were affected or whether the theft of data had caused harm. Illegally obtained Information included names, dates of birth, home addresses, telephone numbers, email contacts, and passport and driving-licence numbers.


On 23 September, Optus denied an insider's claims an application programming interface (API) had accidentally been left exposed to a test network that had access to the Internet. The company also said a complicated breach had occurred and that it had a strong cybersecurity system. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was told Optus believed the hacker had scraped the company's consumer database, and that a third of the data in the database had been copied and extracted.
On 24 September, Optus and the Australian Federal Police (AFP), which had opened a criminal investigation, received reports data from the leak was being sold online and were monitoring the dark web for any attempt to sell the data. The same day, a user on the website BreachForums posted a ransom note; some cybersecurity experts believed the note was genuine but Optus and the AFP did not confirm its genuineness. The note demanded Optus pay $1,500,000 in the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero, provided a sample of data from 200 customers, and said the data thieves would release the personal information of 10,000 customers every day if Optus did not pay the ransom until a week elapsed. After the week elapsed, the thieves would sell the data for A$400,000 to anyone who wanted them. After several hours, the user deleted their original post and appeared to apologise for their actions despite no ransom being paid, stating it was a "mistake to scrape publish [sic] data in first place" and that too many people were paying attention to the breach. The user noted they would have reported the exploit they used if they had the ability to contact Optus, noting the lack of a secure mail, a messaging contact and bug bounties.


Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister Clare O'Neil said Optus was at fault for the attack, refuting Optus's argument the attack was complicated. O'Neil also stated the attack should not have happened, stating: "Responsibility for the security breach rests with Optus[,] and I want to note that the breach is of a nature that we should not expect to see in a large telecommunications provider in this country".
On October 6, the federal government announced an emergency regulation to temporarily allow drivers licences, Medicare information, and passport numbers to be shared with financial services, the Commonwealth, and state and territory agencies to assist monitoring of accounts of customers affected by the breach for potential scams or fraud. Financial institutions had to commit to several actions to receive the data, including honouring privacy obligations and deleting data once it has been used. The Council of Financial Regulators was asked to identify and report on changes to financial instructions to identify customers who were at risk of scams and fraud. The changes were in place for 12 months. Treasurer Jim Chalmers stated the measures would help protect customers from scams and detect fraud.
O'Neil expressed frustration at the lack of ability for the government to intervene in the data breach, its inability to assist with the clean-up or compel Optus to give government services information. She stated Australian law had no use for the government when needed because Australia's laws governing security of critical infrastructure only allowed the government to intervene while a data breach was occurring.
Following the breach, several new security measures to protect victims from fraud, including banks being more-quickly informed of data breaches to prevent the use of data to fraudulently access bank accounts, were announced. The federal government announced an overhaul of the $1.7 billion cybersecurity plan introduced by the previous government, including additional powers to intervene in cybersecurity. The government also considered a Cyber Security Act to create standards and obligations for industry and government, and a reform to the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act to bring customer data and systems under the definition of "critical infrastructure", allowing the government to intervene in major data breaches.
In April 2023, the National Office of Cyber Security was founded with five full-time staff and no additional funding beyond what was already given to the Department of Home Affairs. In June 2023, Air Marshal Darren Goldie was appointed as Australia's inaugural Cyber Security Coordinator. In November 2023, Goldie was recalled to the Department of Defence regarding a workplace matter, and cyber-and-infrastructure security head Hamish Hansford took on the position in the interim.
On 27 February 2023, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and O'Neil hosted a roundtable with industry and civil society groups on cybersecurity following the data breach. A discussion paper was released regarding the role of the federal government in increasing Australia's cybersecurity capability.
The state governments of Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia agreed to pay for the replacement of driver's licences for people whose driver's licence numbers were compromised by the breach. In Victoria, plans to add a second number to driver's licences were quickly enacted; all victims of the breach received the second number as part of their replacements, to protect Victorians from identity theft.


On the day the breach was announced, Optus set up a "war room" at its headquarters in Macquarie Park, New South Wales. This involved around 150 employees, and was headed by former Premier of New South Wales Gladys Berejiklian and regulatory and public affairs head Andrew Sheridan.
Optus commissioned Deloitte to perform an "independent external review" regarding the breach. Optus also offered its "most affected" customers a 12-month subscription to credit-monitoring service Equifax Protect after O'Neil requested the company buy credit monitoring for its customers in Question Time. Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin apologised for the attack on behalf of the company. Optus reserved $140 million for costs relating to the breach, including the replacement of hacked identity documents, Equifax Protect subscriptions, and the Deloitte review. Optus promised to pay for the replacement of compromised Australian and foreign passports.
Optus reported 2.1 million of its customers had had identity documents stolen in the hack. Of these, 1.2 million had at least one current, valid number from a form of personal identification stolen. The remaining 900,000 customers had expired identity numbers stolen.
Services Australia accused Optus of a lack of communication. On 27 September, Services Australia wrote to Optus "asking for the full details of all affected customers with Services Australia credentials exposed, such as Medicare cards and/or Centrelink concession cards". Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten stated a week later, Services Australia had not received any data from Optus, which said it was "in contact with Services Australia and we will be letting all affected customers know the guidance on the steps they can take". There was also confusion about the number of stolen Medicare ID numbers; Shorten told a press conference around 36,900 ID numbers had been stolen and Optus said 14,900 ID numbers had been stolen.
Customers also reported having problems communicating with Optus. Customers stated Optus could not confirm their personal information was part of the data breach. Customers reported after contacting Optus several times, the company's chatbot failed to understand customers' questions about the breach, sales representatives gave poor responses, they did not receive a response from Optus at all, and there were delays in warning customers of compromised personal information. One customer stated: "Ultimately, we are sitting ducks for identity theft, and given that we can’t change our dates of birth, address or names, there isn’t much we can do about it, which is incredibly frustrating".
On 8 March 2023, Bayer Rosmarin restated Optus's claim the attack was sophisticated, stating at a business summit: "[t]he skilled criminal had knowledge of Optus' systems and cycled through many tens of thousands of internet protocol addresses in an attempt to evade our automated cyber monitoring". She also stated Optus never paid a ransom to the hacker and that the main reason for the breach was other scam purposes.
In November 2023, Bayer Rosmarin resigned as CEO of Optus after the 2023 Optus outage; there had been mounting pressure on her to resign due to the outage and the data breach.


On 6 October 2022, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) arrested a 19-year-old Sydney man Dennis Su in his home at Rockdale for blackmailing 93 breach-affected Optus customers. Su said he would commit financial crimes using the customers' personal data unless they paid him A$2,000, which none did. He was charged with one count of using a telecommunication network with intent to commit a serious offence and one count of dealing with identification information with intent to commit an offence. AFP Assistant Commissioner Justine Gough stated Su was not suspected of being responsible for the breach and warned people not to click on links claiming to be from Optus. Su pleaded guilty in November 2022; he did not go to jail due to a guilty plea, his age, and remorse shown for his actions, and he received an 18-month community corrections order.
On 11 October, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) launched an investigation into the breach, Optus's handling of customers' personal data, whether Optus took reasonable steps to protect consumers affected by the breach from fraud, misuse, or loss, and whether Optus needed to keep the collected information. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) also launched an investigation into the breach, focusing on Optus's obligations to protect and dispose of personal data. The federal government gave OAIC $5.5 million to investigate the breach over two years in its October 2022 budget.
Law firm Slater & Gordon launched a class action alleging Optus "breached laws and its own policies by failing to adequately protect customer data and destroy or de-identify former customer data". The ongoing class action was joined by 100,000 current and former Optus customers who wanted compensation for losses, including the time to replace identification documents and the stress it caused. Optus stated it would defend its actions. In court, Slater & Gordon lawyers requested the public release of the Deloitte report, arguing it could reveal the possible causes of the data breach. Optus declined to release the report despite Bayer Rosmarin stating in March 2023 Optus would share "key recommendations and learnings" from the report. In November 2023, Optus lost a bid to keep the report confidential.


On the afternoon of April 5, 2022, amid a tornado outbreak across the Southeastern United States, a large and violent tornado struck the city of Pembroke and the community of Black Creek, Georgia. The National Weather Service forecast office in Charleston, South Carolina, rated the worst of the damage from the tornado EF4 on the Enhanced Fujita scale with winds estimated at 185 miles per hour (298 km/h), which made this strongest tornado in 2022. The tornado killed one person, injured 12 others, and caused $17 million in damage.


During the morning of April 5, a quasi-linear convective system (QLCS), commonly known as a squall line, moved across Georgia. The QLCS was being propelled by a mid-atmospheric shortwave ahead of a cold front. Mixed layer convective available potential energy across Georgia was as high as 1,500–2,000 J/kg, with dew points in the mid-60s °F. As the QLCS was moving across Georgia, a few discrete supercells formed and became particularly robust, owing to strong wind shear and storm relative helicity values exceeding 300 m2/s2. One of these supercells eventually produced the Pembroke–Black Creek tornado.


The tornado formed south of Bacontown Road just southwest of Pembroke in Bryan County at 5:18 p.m. EDT (21:18 UTC). It quickly strengthened as it moved northeastward with a multi-vortex structure that lacked a condensation funnel, snapping or uprooting dozens of trees. The tornado then moved into Pembroke and reached EF2 intensity as it entered the downtown area. Along College Street (SR 67), the tornado inflicted significant damage to the Bryan County Courthouse, which had many windows blown out and lost a large portion of its roof. The Bryan County Jail was also damaged and fencing around the facility was destroyed. The Bryan County Planning and Zoning office was partially unroofed and also sustained some collapse of exterior walls. The Bryan County Administrative Complex, located near the courthouse and jail, also suffered major structural damage. A couple of older wood-frame homes were destroyed along South Main Street (SR 119), multiple other structures and several vehicles in town were damaged, including some that were flipped over, and many trees and power lines were downed. Moving east-northeast, the tornado crossed US 280 and exited the town. It maintained EF2 intensity as it crossed over a wooded, marshy area, flattening a swath of trees while also destroying an outbuilding along C C Road and heavily damaging a house on Stubbs Farm Road.


After moving north of Ellabell and entering the small community of Black Creek, the tornado rapidly strengthened to EF3 intensity as it into George D. Hendrix Park before becoming a violent EF4 wedge tornado as it moved through it. A large recreation center building was heavily damaged at this location, sustaining roof loss and collapse of exterior walls, with portions of its metal framing being twisted. Reinforced concrete light poles were snapped at the base, multiple large trees were snapped, denuded, and partially debarked, and turf at a football field in the park was also damaged. The tornado then grew to its peak width of about 3⁄4 mile (1.2 km) and reached its peak intensity of mid-range EF4 as it struck the Park Place subdivision. Several well-built homes here were destroyed, four of which were leveled, including two that were completely swept away with only their bare concrete slab foundations remaining. These homes were anchor-bolted to their foundations, though there was no contextual damage evidence to support an EF5 rating. Multiple other homes sustained major damage in the Park Place subdivision, some of which had roofs and exterior walls ripped off. Cars were tossed and damaged, and a large portion of the roof from the recreation center at George D. Hendrix Park landed on a house in this area, approximately 500–600 yards (460–550 m) away from where it originated. Several people were left trapped under the rubble of their damaged or destroyed homes and had to be extracted by rescue crews. No fatalities occurred in the Park Place subdivision, though there were multiple serious injuries.


The violent tornado then crossed over Wilma Edwards Road onto the Black Creek Golf Course, where many trees were snapped and partially debarked, a golf cart barn was destroyed, and a clubhouse building sustained severe structural damage. Around the golf course, the tornado reportedly changed the landscape, including a hole it created that was big enough for a pickup truck to fit inside. Some homes at the golf course on Worthington Drive, Wembly Court, and Wellington Court were impacted by the southern edge of the circulation and sustained considerable roof and exterior damage. A man who was at the golf course attempted to take shelter in a clubhouse along Worthington Drive, but the doors were locked. He recorded a video of the tornado as it just barely missed the structure; it showed numerous trees falling down, and the moment when a portion of the roof was ripped off the structure as he stood outside. The man was not injured, and his video went viral. The tornado then weakened to EF3 strength as it moved further to the east-northeast, mowing down more trees as it moved through another wooded and marshy area. It then crossed over McCown Lane and Olive Branch Road before striking a mobile home park along the southern end of Homestead Drive at EF3 intensity. Several well-anchored mobile homes were destroyed after being thrown or rolled. Some outbuildings were destroyed, and storage trailers were overturned as well. A 66-year-old woman was killed in one of the destroyed mobile homes, and multiple injuries occurred throughout this area.
The tornado then began to quickly weaken and narrow as it crossed I-16 at the US 280 exit; several videos showed the tornado crossing the interstate. Along the east side of the interstate, the tornado caused EF1 damage to some large warehouses, ripped part of the roof off a AGCO company building at Oracal Parkway Circle, and inflicted considerable damage to trees. It then dissipated after crossing the road at 5:33 p.m. EDT (21:33 UTC), having traveled 14.39 miles (23.16 km). In addition to the fatality, at least 12 people were injured. Coupled with the EF4 tornado that struck Newnan the previous year, this event marked the first time that F4/EF4 tornadoes had struck Georgia in back-to-back years since modern records began in 1950.


Following the tornado, the Bryan County Commissioners declared a state of emergency in Pembroke. As a result of the state of emergency, a curfew between was established overnight, which prohibited people from trespassing around the tornado disaster area. On April 5, the American Red Cross established a shelter in Pembroke. Search and rescue teams from numerous neighboring towns came to aid in sweeping the area for injuries and aiding victims. Within 24 hours, the Bryan County Board had received $58,000 in donations and aid. The tornado caused the largest insurance claim in the history of Bryan County, with insurance claims reaching $17 million. In March 2024, the Bryan County Board of Commissioners approved the restoration of the Hendrix Park gymnasium, which had been heavily damaged. In April 2024, the Bryan County Board of Commissioners agreed to pay $4.7 million to rebuild the Hendrix Park gymnasium. In July 2024, the Bryan County Commissioners approved the installation of 15 new emergency warning sirens for Bryan County.


The women's 400 metres at the 2023 European Athletics Indoor Championships took place in three rounds at the Ataköy Athletics Arena in Istanbul, Turkey, on 3 and 4 March 2023. This was the 37th time the women's 400 metres was contested at the European Athletics Indoor Championships. Athletes could qualify by achieving the entry standard or by their World Athletics Ranking for the event.
Twenty-seven athletes from sixteen nations competed in the first round on 3 March in the morning. In twenty-sixth place, Duna Viñals set an Andorran record of 57.71 s. Twelve athletes advanced to the semi-finals on 3 March in the evening, where Viivi Lehikoinen of Finland was disqualified for obstruction and six athletes qualified to compete in the final race on 4 March.
In the final, the gold medal was won by world record holder Femke Bol of the Netherlands in a time of 49.85 s, successfully defending her 2021 title, silver by Lieke Klaver of the Netherlands in 50.57 s, and bronze by Anna Kiełbasińska of Poland in 51.25 s. In fourth place, Susanne Gogl-Walli set an Austrian record of 51.73 s.

2023 European Athletics Indoor Championships – Women's 400 metres


The women's 400 metres was contested at every previous edition of the European Athletics Indoor Championships (1970–2021), 36 times in total before 2023: every year from 1970 until 1990, and every other year since then until 2021, with a three-year gap between 2002 and 2005 for synchronisation with other international athletics championships.
The 2023 European Athletics Indoor Championships was held in the Ataköy Athletics Arena in the Ataköy quarter in Bakırköy, Istanbul, Turkey. This indoor track and field arena was originally built for the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships and has a capacity of 7,450 spectators.
On 19 February 2023, less than two weeks before the championships, Femke Bol of the Netherlands broke Jarmila Kratochvílová's 1982 world record of the 400 metres indoor in a time of 49.26 s. At the start of the 2023 championships, this was also the European record and the leading time in Europe and the world. Kratochvílová's former world record of 49.59 s was still standing as the championship record. Bol was the defending champion after winning this event in a time of 50.63 s in 2021.


For the women's 400 metres at these championships, the qualification period was from 20 February 2022 to 19 February 2023. Athletes could qualify by achieving the entry standard of 52.20 s for 400 metres indoor or 50.80 s for 400 metres outdoor. Athletes who did not achieve the entry standard could still qualify by their position on the World Athletics Ranking for this event. There was a target number of thirty athletes in total, with a maximum of three athletes per nation. A final entry list with twenty-seven athletes from sixteen nations was published on 23 February 2023.


The five heats of round 1 were held on 3 March 2023, starting at 10:40 (UTC+3) in the morning. Of the twenty-seven competing athletes from sixteen nations, the first two athletes in each heat (Q) and the next two fastest (q) advanced to the semi-finals. In the first heat, Duna Viñals of Andorra set a national record (NR) of 57.71 s. In the fifth heat, Tereza Petržilková of Czech Republic, Helena Ponette of Belgium, and Cliodhna Manning of Ireland ran personal best times (PB).


The two heats of the semi-finals were held on 3 March 2023, starting at 19:55 (UTC+3) in the evening. Of the twelve competing athletes from ten nations, the first three athletes in each heat (Q) advanced to the final. Viivi Lehikoinen of Finland was disqualified (DQ) for breaking technical rule 17.2.2 about jostling and obstruction (TR17.2.2).


The final with the six remaining athletes from four nations was held on 4 March 2023 at 20:30 (UTC+3) in the evening. Femke Bol of the Netherlands was leading the race after about 100 metres and she completed the first lap of 200 metres in 23.78 s. Bol went on to win the gold medal after finishing the race in 49.85 s, successfully defending her title from 2021 with her third 400 metres indoor race under 50 seconds of 2023. Lieke Klaver of the Netherlands won silver in 50.57 s and Anna Kiełbasińska of Poland won bronze in 51.25 s. Outside the medals, Susanne Gogl-Walli of Austria set a national record (NR) of 51.73 s.
After the race, Bol and Klaver celebrated with Dutch flags with the texts giro 555 and geef nu meaning 'donate now [to] giro [account number] 555' printed on them, a call to donate money to the Dutch Cooperating Aid Organizations for humanitarian aid to the victims of the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes a month earlier.


The 2023 FIA GT World Cup (formally the Macau GT Cup – FIA GT World Cup) was a Grand Touring (GT) sports car race held on the Guia Circuit in Macau on 19 November. It was the sixth FIA GT World Cup and the thirteenth GT3 car race held in Macau. The Automobile General Association Macau-China, the event's promoter, appointed the motorsports organiser SRO Motorsports Group to form a grid. The edition included two races: a 12-lap qualifying race and a 16-lap main event.
Raffaele Marciello of Mercedes-AMG Team Landgraf won both the qualifying and main races from pole position. Marciello led every lap of both races, winning his second consecutive FIA GT World Cup and becoming the race's first repeat winner. Edoardo Mortara of Audi Sport Asia Team Absolute took second place, and Augusto Farfus of ROWE Racing finished third.


The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) sanctioned the 2023 FIA GT World Cup, the event's sixth edition, the thirteenth race in Macau for GT3-specification vehicles, and an undercard to the 2023 Macau Grand Prix. It was held at the 6.120 km (3.803 mi) Guia Circuit in the streets of the Chinese special administrative region of Macau on 19 November after three days of practice and qualifying, and was co-organised by the SRO Motorsports Group at the FIA's request. The FIA (the governing body of motor racing), the Automobile General Association Macao-China (Macau's FIA member club), and the Macau Grand Prix Organizing Committee signed a three-year agreement to hold the race, which had been cancelled from 2020 to 2022 due to travel restrictions imposed on foreign visitors caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Macau and was instead held as a non-FIA recognised event. This was in contrast to previous agreements which were one-year contracts. The FIA nominated Pirelli as the race's control tyre supplier on a three-year contract beginning in 2023. Each driver could use five sets of slick tyres and three sets of wet-weather tyres during the weekend.
Drivers had to have competed in an FIA-recognised GT3 championship race within the preceding two seasons or have considerable experience in Grand Touring (GT) cars to enter the event. Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze-rated drivers were permitted to compete, but the FIA GT World Cup Committee might prohibit a competitor's entry if it deemed them to be too inexperienced. Entries were open from 1 July to 31 August. The FIA and the Macau Grand Prix Organizing Committee revealed the entry list on 25 October, which included five GT3 manufacturers (Audi, BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes-AMG and Porsche) and 21 drivers. All five preceding FIA GT World Cup winners, Maro Engel, Augusto Farfus, Raffaele Marciello, Edoardo Mortara and Laurens Vanthoor, entered the race. Climax Racing's Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo was withdrawn after unsuccessfully trying to assign Lucas Auer as its driver, lowering the number of entries to 20.


Two half an hour practice sessions were held on the afternoon of 16 November. Marciello, Christopher Haase and Matteo Cairoli competed for the fastest lap in the first session, with Marciello leading at 2:16.150 on his final fast lap. He was three-tenths of a second faster than Vanthoor in second, with Cairoli, Kévin Estre and Engel in third through fifth. There were no major incidents during the session. Marchy Lee temporarily stopped his Mercedes-Benz on the circuit at the start of practice before Daniel Serra's Ferrari 296 GT3 miscalculated the Melco hairpin on an out-lap, causing a car blockage that marshals cleared. Estre's Porsche suffered slight damage against the turn 15 barrier but continued with no apparent damage. The second practice session was delayed by half an hour owing to incidents during the Macau Grand Prix's first qualifying session, and lap times were quicker than the preceding session. Several drivers led the field before Cairoli lapped quickest overall at 2:15.532 late in the session. Marciello was 0.032 seconds slower in second, followed by Daniel Juncadella, Serra and Farfus. As with the first practice session, there were no major incidents or stoppages. On his final run, Engel overcorrected and drove into the run-off area at Lisboa corner, although his car was not damaged.
Friday afternoon's half-hour qualifying session determined the qualification race's starting order with each driver's fastest lap times. The weather was dry and windy for qualifying. Marciello, in his final race as a Mercedes factory driver before moving to BMW in 2024, reset his own GT3 track record of 2:14.542 on his last quick lap on an old set of tyres to secure his third successive FIA GT World Cup pole position. Marciello was joined on the front row by Mortara, who was 0.216 seconds slower but had provisional pole until Marciello's lap in the last seconds of qualifying. Engel was third, bringing two Mercedes-Benz drivers into the top three, which he attributed to winds and slightly higher tyre pressures. Vanthoor was the fastest of the seven Porsche drivers, taking fourth ahead of Sheldon van der Linde, the highest BMW driver, in fifth. Juncadella took sixth, ahead of Serra's fastest Ferrari in seventh place. Farfus, Earl Bamber and Hasse made up positions eight through ten. Cairoli was unable to maintain his previous pace because he lost momentum, qualifying 11th. Alessio Picariello qualified 12th, ahead of fellow Porsche brandmates Estre in 13th and Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters champion Thomas Preining in 14th. Ye Hongli was the top placed Silver-rated driver in 15th, followed by Adderly Fong in 16th. Jules Gounon was the slowest Platinum-rated participant in 17th, ahead of Cheng Congfu in 18th, Chen Weian in 19th and Lee completed the starting order in 20th. Some drivers ran off into the Lisboa turn run-off area during qualifying. Estre triggered the session's only stoppage when he misjudged his braking point and collided with the outside tyre barrier at Lisboa turn 12 minutes in, causing minor damage to his Porsche's left-front corner. Estre's car had to be removed from the barrier to continue driving. All cars returned to the paddock during the stoppage. Cairoli damaged his car's left front corner after leaving the circuit at Police turn, and Ye damaged the front of his car at Moorish Hill Corner five minutes before practice ended.


The 12-lap qualifying race to set the main race's starting order commenced in an air temperature of 22 °C (72 °F) at 14:05 Macau Standard Time (UTC+08:00) on 18 November. Marciello made a quick start to lead the race into the first corner, while Mortara and Engel battled for second, with the latter overtaking on the outside through the high-speed Mandarin Oriental Bend turn. Vanthoor lost four positions on the first lap after being forced wide at Lisboa corner and hitting the barrier, while Juncadella moved from sixth to fourth. Preining collided with the guardrail barrier at the entry to San Francisco Bend corner due to driver error, while Cairoli stopped with heavy rear-end damage after colliding with Ye. The safety car was deployed for the first time for four laps to allow for the safe recovery of the crashed cars. Both drivers were unhurt, however Cairoli was transported to the medical centre for a headache. On lap five, Marciello retained the lead after fighting off Engel's attempts to pass him on the run to Lisboa turn. Juncadella tried to pass Mortara for third on the outside into Lisboa and was ahead of him into the turn. Mortara's position on the outside gave him an advantage and Juncadella was pushed into the outside tyre wall. Juncadella fell from fourth to ninth due to the incident, but he continued driving despite another impact with Farfus, removing his front-right side-view mirror. The first three drivers pulled away from the rest of the field.
On lap eight, Fong lost control of his car's rear in the Mandarin Oriental Bend turn due to a loss of some downforce from being affected by turbulence from a vehicle ahead of him. His car's left-rear wheel made minor contact with the inside wall leaving the turn, breaking the rear-left suspension's tie rod and sending him across the track. He struck the outside side barrier exiting the corner before ricocheting across the track. Although his Audi was heavily damaged, Fong was unhurt and quickly exited the car unaided. Fong did not need medical assistance. Race officials dispatched the safety car for the second time before stopping the race with a red flag on lap nine to allow marshals to clear the track of debris and repair the heavily damaged barrier. Every driver returned to the pit lane for the stoppage. The race resumed behind the safety car 23 minutes later, at 14:57 local time, and the drivers exited the pit lane behind the safety car. After one lap behind the safety car, the remaining 17 drivers resumed racing, with Marciello keeping the lead and holding off Engel into Lisboa corner. Van Der Linde passed Serra for fifth into Lisboa turn and regained control of his car despite missing his braking point. There were no change of positions on the final lap, and Maricello pulled away to lead the final two laps and win the qualification race and secure pole position for the main race. Engel finished 1.172 seconds behind in second and Mortara was third. Farfus, Van Der Linde, Serra, Vanthoor, Haase, Juncadella, Bamber, Picariello, Estre, Cheng, Chen, Gounon, Ye and Lee were the last of the finishers. Of the 20 starting drivers, 17 completed the race.


^1 — Ye Hongli incurred a ten-second time penalty for colliding with Matteo Cairoli on the first lap and was demoted from 13th to 16th.


The 16-lap main race began in dry weather conditions of 22 °C (72 °F) at 12:05 local time. Uno Racing Team inspected and withdrew Fong's car owing to chassis damage sustained in the incident in the previous day's qualification race, lowering the number of starting cars to 19. Marciello accelerated from the rolling start to maintain the lead into the first corner, and after defending against Engel, he pulled away on the drive to Lisboa turn. Van Der Linde moved from sixth to fourth while his brandmate Farfus fell from fourth to sixth on lap one. On the following lap, Van Der Linde slipstreamed behind Mortara's car by using his BMW's higher top speed but could not pass him. Engel began suffering from a broken paddle shifter on lap four but the problem exacerbated after examining the cables and connections between the dashboard and the steering wheel. Mortara occasionally closed up to the back of Engel's car, as Van Der Linde applied pressure. On lap eight, Estre collided with the side of Bamber's Porsche at Lisboa turn, damaging his rear diffuser with subsequent contact while contending for tenth. Soon after, Chen made a driver error and crashed into the tyre barrier at the same point, leading race control to deploy the safety car for a single lap because the track was partially blocked.