A would-be thief screwed up my wife's dash about that bad when they attempted (and failed) to steal her radio. They cut the wires all the way back in the dash (far enough back that I don't even know how they got to them), broke all the plastic surrounding it, somehow still did not manage to pull the radio all the way out, and gave up.
It looked bad and she drove around with a big empty hole in her dash for a while, but it was nowhere near $12k in damage. A new dash piece from the junkyard was about $20, a new radio was about $100 (they screwed up the wiring both internally and externally by pulling on it that it didn't work), and it took about a weekend of my time (had to re-wire everything, as the wiring to the speakers was completely toast).
