Hats off to the Southampton County Sheriff’s Office for making a quick arrest in the alleged theft of heavy equipment valued at $100,000.

We find it incredible to believe that two 20-some-year-olds are allegedly responsible for stealing a backhoe, dump truck, bulldozer, asphalt-paver, snowplow blade, dirt buckets, hydraulic mower head, tri-axle trailers and more. A Virginia Beach contractor had the equipment stored in the woods, 300 feet off Bell Road near Ivor.

Stealing it had to be no easy task.

We hear suspects Andrew Holdsworth, 23, and Tyrone Gay, 24, had quite an elaborate scheme going. After allegedly stealing the equipment and four peanut trailers from farms in Southampton, Isle of Wight and Surry counties, the pair apparently took everything to scrap yards in Carrollton and Suffolk to get some quick cash.

Virginia law requires that anyone who takes items to a scrap-yard for recycling must show identification. The first place any good cop is going to go in a case like this is the local scarp-yard looking for that identification.

So for anyone else thinking about this as a possible get-rich scheme, forget it. You’re likely to get caught.