A Nevada couple was shocked to find that a man tried to steal the charging cable to their electrical vehicle right from their driveway, and he was caught on surveillance video.

Lori, who wanted her last name withheld, spoke to KVVU-TV about the unwanted visitor outside their Las Vegas home.

She said that she was awakened by a notification on her home alerting her that her electric car had been disconnected from the charging cable in the middle of the night.

“I thought it was me. I thought I didn’t plug it in correctly," said Lori. "When I went to check it, I was so surprised cause the cord was all the way in the middle.”

When they reviewed their security video, they saw a man with a shirt tied around his face pulling on the cord to try to dislodge it from underneath their garage door. He runs away after Lori opens the door to check on their car.

KVUU said that thieves are targeting charging cables in order to sell the copper wiring to scrap yards, even if they only get between $15 and $20 per cable.

And it's becoming a national problem as thieves hit up commercial charging stations in order to steal more cables at a time. One business that oversaw about 1,000 charging stations reported 129 incidents of cables being cut so far this year.

Lori's husband, Glenn, said they would start charging during the day in order to deter theft.

“From now on we are going to be charging our car in the late afternoon and making sure that we are done with it before we go to bed so there won’t be any of those crimes of opportunity,” he said.

The surveillance video of the would-be thief was published on KVUU's news video on YouTube.

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