LOS ANGELES — Every night, throughout commercial and residential neighborhoods in California, the clang-clang-clang of shopping carts resonates as a brigade of scavengers roam the streets and scour curbside recycling bins in search of valuables.

They’re not looking for gold, money or precious stones, but aluminum cans, plastic bottles and glass containers.

Here in California, one of 10 U.S. states that have container deposit laws designed to encourage recycling, collecting cans and bottles that can be redeemed each for a nickel or sold as scrap metal can be a lucrative business.

The greening of America has created a new crime genre: green thefts.

In drought-ravaged California, water has become so valuable that thieves are cutting pipes and taking water from fire hydrants, storage tanks, creeks and rivers.

In the most recent high-profile case, "Magnum P.I." actor Tom Selleck found himself up the creek when The Calleguas Municipal Water District in Ventura County sued him for water theft. The district hired a private detective who saw a truck tapping into a hydrant in Thousand Oaks and followed it to Selleck’s gated estate and 60-acre ranch outside the water district. The civil complaint was settled last week for more than $21,000, enough to cover the cost of the detective. No criminal charges were filed because prosecutors found no intent to commit a crime.

In just the past two months, California recycling fraud units busted five illegal operations that were bringing tons of recycled goods from states that have no redemption fees into California to collect the fees here.

California collects $1.2 billion a year in nickels and dimes from its redemption program. The portion that is never redeemed is used to run conservation and recycling programs but thefts are eating into the funds.

“The basic problem is that a truckload of aluminum cans is worth $40,000 more in California than it is in Arizona,” said Arthur Boone, owner of the Center for Recycling Research in Berkeley, California and former president of the Northern California Recycling Association. “When you buy aluminum cans at the store, you’re paying a nickel to the store and the state” – money that goes back to the consumer when they redeem empty containers.

“You’re not paying a nickel in Arizona,” Boone said. When someone brings tons of these out-of-state cans and redeem them in California, “it ultimately impacts the balance sheet of the state because it doesn’t put any money in the system.”

Inspectors with the California Department of Justice’s Recycling Fraud Unit and California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) have scored big arrests in just the last two months. In May, five Californians were indicted on grand theft and recycling fraud charges in a $14 million recycling fraud scheme involving importing beverage containers from Phoenix across state lines. More than 20 recycling centers lost their certifications as a result.