HOUSTON—Tyrone Fransaw has what he calls a good sense of humor, but he says there was nothing funny about losing his phone service last month.

“It happened one day and then it would come back. Then it would happen again. (It was) frustrating. Yeah, very frustrating,” said Fransaw.

He said he thought it was a problem with AT&T.

Wednesday morning, police confirmed that four copper thieves were the culprits behind Fansaw's troubles.

Three have been arrested and a fourth suspect, Gilberto Corona, is still on the run.

Police say that over the last several months, two of the men ripped off tons of phone wire in Acres Homes.

They would burn off the protective coating and then get the other two suspects to sell the hot copper to scrap metal dealers.

Police said it was easy money.

Now some investigators want a new law that would force scrap dealers to pay their customers only by checks mailed to them at the address on their IDs.

“That way, we won’t have these guys going in there getting 50 bucks on the spot. They’re going to have to wait,” said one officer.

Some in the scrap metal industry say the law would hurt their bottom line.

“My company alone would have to write $70,000 checks a week to do something like that,” said Dennis Laviage with C and D Scrap Metal.

He said that’s in addition to the thousands of dollars he’s already spent keeping up with the city’s current scrap metal ordinance.

Fransaw says he could care less about the law.  He said that he just wants his phones to stay on.