By Michael Harthorne 

Detectives recover thousands of laptops, TVs from cargo-theft cartel
Detectives recovered 1,169 TVs, not to mention thousands more laptops and refrigerators, believed to have been stolen by a cargo-theft cartel over the summer. (Courtesy of PATROL)
SUMNER, Wash. -- Detectives recovered $1.5 million worth of stolen laptops, TVs, refrigerators and more believed to have been stolen by an organized Southern California cargo-theft cartel back in August.

According to the PATROL Auto Theft Task Force, the suspects used semi-tractors to steal five cargotrailers loaded with high-value items Aug. 21. They reportedly would have stolen four more cargo trailers if one of the suspects hadn't crashed a truck, blocking their exit.
 
After weeks of investigation, PATROL detectives served search warrants on two storage facilities and a warehouse earlier this month, finding many of the stolen items.
 
The recovered items included:
1,169 large-screen TVs
1,272 laptops
124 refrigerators
According to PATROL, detectives arrested one suspect while serving the search warrants. They believe he is the leader of the cartel, the rest of which is believed to be in Southern California or Mexico.

Original Article

Grace M. Lavigne, Associate Web Editor 

Cargo theft is about to enter its busiest season, and motor carriers, in particular, are advised to be on guard.

According to FreightWatch International, theft activity in the U.S. in 2013 was concentrated in the fourth quarter with a total of 242 incidents. The greatest number of incidents occurred in late September just before the beginning of the holiday shipping season.

The U.S. has also seen a “significant” rise in driver theft incidents, which involve either direct theft by the driver, the driver’s voluntary collusion or complicity in the crime or a deceptive criminal posing as a legitimate carrier resource, FreightWatch said. This method of crime reached an all-time high in 2013, soaring 76 percent from 2012 and 389 percent from 2011.

“This growing trend – surreptitious driver – warrants acute awareness as the shipping industry enters its peak season,” FreightWatch said.

The driver turnover rate ― the rate at which drivers need to be replaced ― was 92 percent at large carriers in the first quarter, according to the American Trucking Associations’ latest quarterly Trucking Activity Report, which is a “huge” disadvantage and security risk to an organization’s supply chain, according to FreightWatch.

“Fictitious pickups continue to be a growing threat in our industry,” the analyst said. “The frequency of fictitious pickups increased sharply from 2011 to 2012, remained relatively constant in 2013, and have resumed a steep upward path during the first two quarters of 2014; 26 fictitious pickups have already been reported this year, totaling over $3.5 million in lost cargo.”

Forty percent of those incidents in 2014 targeted electronics and apparel, FreightWatch said. These low-risk, high-reward incidents continue to be relatively easy for the criminal to organize, while becoming increasingly painful for enterprises to endure. 

The peak season from July to September adds even more risk of cargo thefts to supply chains, as limitations on available carriers often necessitate brokering, according to the report. Logisticians, transporters and security professionals should be aware of the threats, as well as exercise due diligence when sourcing carriers and ensure that all participants in the supply chain comply with industry best practices.

“The organized criminal dedicates an inordinate amount of time to surveillance, preparation and rehearsals; we must dedicate ample resources to proactively combat this growing threat,” FreightWatch said.

From May through July, FreightWatch recorded 179 thefts in the U.S., with 66 thefts in May, 53 in June and 60 in July. The average loss per value per incident during the period was $151,174. Compared with the previous quarter, thefts decreased 12 percent, while the average loss value decreased 35 percent. Food and drinks were the product types most often stolen with 37 thefts or 21 percent of all incidents during the three-month period.

Contact Grace M. Lavigne at glavigne@joc.com and follow her on Twitter: @Lavigne_JOC.


Original Article

ST. PETERSBURG — A semitrailer truck stolen Sunday morning from a towing company was carrying approximately 36,000 pounds of Crisco sticks destined for delivery to a Publix distribution center in Lakeland, according to St. Petersburg Police Department reports.

The truck, a red 2005 Volvo with the Florida license tag 523 93P, had "NS Express LLC, Bowling Green, KY 42104" on both of the cab doors, police said; the trailer was a white Hyundai model with the Florida license tag 445 0PP. They were parked at Coastal Towing, 2390 118th Ave. N, at the time of the theft.

In addition, police said thieves broke into another trailer carrying boxes from the Amazon distribution center in Ruskin. A number of boxes were opened and their contents removed, but it was not immediately known what items were stolen.


Original Article

By Aaron Bracamontes / El Paso Times


Members of local law enforcement agencies that included El Paso Sheriff , El Paso Police Department, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau
Members of local law enforcement agencies that included El Paso Sheriff's, El Paso Police Department, 
   
Fifteen people, including two alleged Barrio Azteca members, were arrested Thursday as a result of a cargo theft ring investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies.

The arrests were made in various locations around El Paso, including a warehouse near the airport in the 20 block of Spur Drive. A tractor-trailer full of stolen flat screen TV's was seized at that location, said police spokesman Sgt. Chris Mears.

Aldo Jose Cano, 32; Sammy Tercero, 39; Michael Navarrette, 24; Fernando Morales, 38; Cindy Avalos Morales, 30; Roberto Adrian Carreon, 32; and Jose Sanchez, 28; were arrested on suspicion of engaging in organized criminal activity in connection with high value cargo thefts, officials said during a press conference today. Cano is an alleged member of the Barrio Azteca gang, Mears said.

Eight others, who had connections to the ring, were arrested on various warrants and smaller offenses.

Two men, Andres Brito, 32, and Jeffrie Castandeda, 21, are also wanted on suspicion of engaging in organized criminal activity.

The arrests were made by a task force comprising officers and agents from the El Paso Police Department, Texas Department of Public Safety, FBI, El Paso County Sheriff's Office and Department of Homeland Security. The task force had been investigating the thefts since 2013, but the ring's alleged activities had been traced back to 2009.

Original Article

KOLR10 News

SPRINGFIELD, Mo.-- A truck driver was sentenced to four and a half years in federal prison on Thursday for a cargo theft scheme.

According to a news release from the United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, 49-year-old Michael Lee Sherley of Memphis, Tennessee pleaded guilty in March to stealing a trailer in West Plains.

Sherley worked for Nu World Trucking, LLC, a company owned by his uncle, Earl Nunn. Nunn and Sherley drove semis without trailers, and went through truck stops and gas stations looking for trailers that were unattended. They would steal the trailers, and later sell of fence the items inside.

On May 11, 2013, Nunn and Sherley stole a 2000 Wabash trailer from the Snappy Mart Truck Stop in West Plains. The trailer contained a load of Green Giant canned corn. Prosecutors believe Nunn and Sherley also committed thefts in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. 

Nunn pleaded guilty in July and has not been sentenced.

Original Article

By Barry Tarnef

In his latest blog, Barry Tarnef talks cargo safety and loss prevention. 

Click the brief clip below to lean more.  And to know more about new, trending cargo-theft schemes

Original Post

New report says Chicago remains a hot spot for cargo thefts in Illinois.

Illinois, and more specifically, the Chicago area, just won’t turn loose of its reputation for being one of the truck cargo theft crime capitals in the U.S., according to a new report.

The logistics security services provider FreightWatch International says in the second quarter of this year, Illinois ranked as the state with the fifth highest recorded cargo thefts.

“Illinois is a hotspot for cargo theft activity, particularly in the Chicago area. With theft rates and average values well above the national average within several product types, it is clear that organized cargo theft is active in this area,” the report said.

Examples of this include metals, the fifth most stolen product type since 2010, which is tied with the food/drinks category for the most stolen product type in Illinois during the same time frame.

Another standout is the average value for alcohol/tobacco thefts in the state, which at $773,963 is the highest value of any product type in Illinois, and 246% higher than the national average for this product category of thefts over the same time period.

It also noted auto/parts is the fourth most stolen product type in Illinois, while nationwide it's seventh. Clothing/shoes recorded an average value of $519,000 in the state, just over twice the average value of these thefts nationwide.

While theft of the entire trailer or container is the primary theft type in Illinois, as it is across the nation, with 84.9% in Illinois and 81% nationally, other theft types, such as deceptive pickups, facility burglary and driver theft and hijacking, happen at lower frequency in Illinois than nationally.

Original Article

Logistics security services provider FreightWatch International said in the second quarter of 2014, it recorded 185 truck cargo thefts in the U.S., down 4.9% from the same time a year earlier.

Of those, 179 were full truckload cargo thefts while six were last-mile courier thefts.

The highest number, 70, of these thefts occurred in April, 66 in May, and 49 in June.

The average loss value per incident during the quarter was $174,415, up 5.6% from the same time in 2013.

“The average loss-value ceiling continues to rise as the persistence and increased sophistication of organized cargo criminals sustains,” FreightWatch said in its report. “Although the overall volume of incidents has decreased, the count is well within the margin of incidents expected to be collected in the upcoming weeks.”

The product type most often stolen was food/drinks with 19% of all incidents in the U.S. during the quarter. Home/garden cargoes, the second most stolen category in the first quarter of the year, saw a 45% drop in incidents from 31 thefts to 17 thefts, to end the quarter as the fourth most stolen product type with 9% of the total. Electronics regained its position at the second place spot with 32 thefts, or 18% of the total, while the personal care category recorded triple the amount of thefts year-over-year, with 15 thefts or 8% of the total. The building/industrial sector experienced the third most thefts with 19 or 11% of total thefts.

The category of pharmaceuticals had by far the highest of any category when it came to the average value of each heist at $2.8 million, while the electronics category was ranked second at nearly $305,000.

There was a significant change as Florida and Texas both surpassed California as cargo theft hot spots. Florida had 45 thefts, or 25.1% of the total, and Texas had 29 thefts or 16.2% of the total, respectively. California recorded the third highest theft rate with 28, or 15.6% of the total, a 53.3% decline from the first quarter of the year and a 52.5% drop from the second quarter of 2013.

“The suspected cause for this drop, according to the California Highway Patrol Cargo Theft Interdiction Program Taskforce, can be attributed to cargo theft crews relocating to other areas,” said FreightWatch. “Another possible cause is that the crews kept busy during the typically slower first quarter and are now lying in wait in the second quarter,” according to the taskforce.

Rounding out the top five states with the most cargo thefts were Georgia and Illinois. These top five states accounted for nearly three-quarters of all U.S. truck cargo thefts in FreightWatch's data.

Of the incidents in which a location was recorded, unsecured parking accrued the greatest number of incidents, primarily at truckstops, with a total of 113 thefts.

Following previous trends, incidents involving theft of trailer/container were most common during the second quarter with 131 thefts, or 76% of all thefts. Theft from trailer/container consisted of 14 thefts, an increase of 40% as compared to the first quarter of the year, and was the second most prevalent theft type. In a tie for third, both deceptive pickup and facility burglary each had 10 thefts. However, the latter increased by 100% compared to second quarter of last year and 67% compared to first quarter of this year.

Original Article

Jeff Pearce 

Drugs get the big headlines: pot plantations out in BC; meth labs in your squeaky clean ‘burbs in Calgary. Even when trucking’s involved. Only two years ago, the Toronto Starreported on the lucrative cross-border drug smuggling trade via long-haul loads; one bust alone turned up 97 bricks of cocaine, worth more than $4 million. But here’s the thing: if you think about it, why should crooks bother at all with dope, when there’s so much legit merchandise to be ripped off?

Let’s go back to early May. The Auto/ Cargo Theft Unit of the York Regional Police get a tip and swoop in on multiple warehouses in Vaughan and Toronto, where thieves have stashed $1.4-million worth of stolen goods. The cops have to cart away 15 loads—count ‘em, 15—of merchandise: baby products, barbecues, household appliances, cleaning supplies, tools, forklifts, vehicle antifreeze, musical instruments, and not just the kind you can walk off with, like a guitar or clarinet, but an actual baby grand piano. Detective Sergeant Paul LaSalle of the York Regional Police has a good sense of humour, and he deadpans, “Yeah, we knew we’d get questions about the grand piano.”

In a way, the raids are a tribute to a new spirit of collaboration among law enforcement agencies, the insurance business and the trucking industry. It was a classic team effort, with Peel Regional Police assisting and the Ontario Trucking Association involved. Thanks in part to the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s cargo database, the cops were able to return most of the stolen goods to their legitimate owners.


It’s a significant win, given that cargo theft—whether from trucks or containers in a port—is an international problem. Roberto Saviano, the investigative journalist who now lives in hiding from the mafia, started his classic on organized crime, Gomorrah, not with a discussion of coke and heroin but how the port of Naples has a bursting black market in jeans, Barbies and plastic toys.

For Canada alone, the illegal haul is $5 billion a year, more than enough incentive for the IBC and the Canadian Trucking Alliance to expand their cargo theft reporting pilot program. Garry Robertson, national director of investigative services for IBC, says the program will be expanded out west. “I’ve already got some law enforcement agencies from the Western regions that are now interested. We will be doing that so that we can see: is the pattern [of thefts] that is happening in British Columbia, Alberta and across the Prairies the same pattern that we have in southern Ontario using the [Highway] 401 corridor between Windsor and Montreal? Or do we have another one?” He says the faster that information about load thefts can be put out in the media, the more tips will come back from the public.

The free flow of information wasn’t always there. Barry Peabody, a consultant in product management for SGI Canada in Regina, concedes that cargo theft is an issue that trucking firms are often embarrassed to talk about. “They have to admit it to the client, but they’re also looking at the image of their own company, and you know, if you’re hauling for 10 customers and you are publicly saying we’ve lost, for whatever reason, these commodities for this customer, the other nine customers are going to be sitting there thinking, hmmm.”

When Wheels Are Turning

In a climate of reticence, of course, the thieves can go merrily on. The obvious big-ticket bull’s eyes are Montreal, Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area. But, Peabody says what the bad guys want differs from year to year. While electronics used to be favourite items, they can be detected far easier these days and shut down remotely. “So what we’re starting to see are more common things getting stolen. Food and drink they can get sold relatively quickly, and most don’t have serial numbers on them. Somebody steals a flat of soft drinks, you’re not going to really ask, is this a stolen commodity? It doesn’t occur to you when you’re at a summer market somewhere and somebody’s selling bottles of cola for 75 cents less than what everybody else is selling them for.”

He says the risk in Eastern Canada is mainly to packaged consumer goods going through a wholesaler to the retailer. In the West, of course, a lot of base minerals, lumber, ore, grains and potash get shipped. The risk is lower “because of the nature of the commodity itself. Combined with the commodity is where it originates, because, you know, there’s an old saying in cargo insurance that freight at rest is freight at risk. What the idea there is, is if the wheels are turning, there hasn’t been a load stolen yet.”

“‘We’ve never picked up a load from you, we don’t know who you are, that wasn’t us.’ And then you realize that their identity has been stolen.”

A load that has to stop a dozen times before it can actually get out onto the highway has an inherent risk in each of those stops. Conversely, if you load some grain from an elevator and hit the road, your risk is less. But you can’t just look at what’s in the trailer—consider who’s behind the wheel. “When you’re shipping a commodity, the trucking company should be looking at the drivers themselves…. You’ve got to make sure that you’re checking their background, checking their previous employers. Would the previous employer rehire them, or are they glad they’re gone?”
If the targets for theft vary, so too can the perpetrators and their methods. Here in Canada, cargo theft may be one part of the “business portfolio” for hardcore violent criminals—infamous gangster Bindy Johal bribed drivers in Surrey to rip off their own loads, worth about $20,000 on the street in his day (Johal ended up fatally shot in the head in a Vancouver nightclub in 1998). But trucking loads can also be the prey of highly organized specialists. Garry Robertson knows this only too well. He was with Peel Regional Police for years as a detective in auto theft and left in the ‘90s to open a private investigation company with a colleague, dealing sometimes with cargo theft and insurance crime. For him, the faces of the villains haven’t changed that much over his career. “Quite honestly, there are still players that I dealt with back then that are still around today.”

In the U.S., the thieves tend to work in groups of five to 20, according to Scott Cornell, national director of Travelers Investigative Services Specialty Investigations Group in Hartford, Connecticut.

Cornell says most cargo theft in the States remains a crime of opportunity; it’s not the fastest growing way, but still the most common. “How do they know what’s in it? Well, first answer is, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you can tell that they’ve shopped through the trailer.” Thieves can open and rummage through five or six trailers before they pick what they want. Other times, they might have inside information. “Sometimes they do surveillance on the warehouses. They see what’s being loaded, they know what’s being loaded, and then they follow that truck out until its first stop.” And then they wait… until the driver pulls into a rest stop and leaves his rig.

Strategic Scenarios

So much for “straight” cargo theft. Cornell also knows the scenarios for what he calls “strategic” cargo theft. Some thieves will go so far as to steal the identity of a legit trucking operation, go online to the load boards and make a bid in their victim’s name. A shipper innocently accepts the offer, and goodbye merchandise. “So then the legitimate trucking company will get a call a week later or a couple of days later, saying, ‘Hey, you picked up a load of widgets from us the other day, and we haven’t heard from you since,’ and the company says, ‘We’ve never picked up a load from you, we don’t know who you are, that wasn’t us.’ And then you realize that their identity has been stolen.”



In what Cornell labels “fictitious pickup,” the thieves learn where a scheduled load has to be picked up, show up hours early posing as the legitimate carrier, and off they go. Like something out of a heist movie, the real carriers then come along at the proper time—but far too late.

“Is that happening here?” asks Garry Robertson. “Absolutely it is.” In Quebec “not that long ago,” a thieves’ ring had “all the correct paperwork” with phony invoices but the right logos, letterhead and branding for a genuine carrier, right down to the proper markings for the truck they used. The beauty of that, he says, is that “they not only had all the information, but everything that was done was done properly. Drivers’ licenses were exchanged… photo ID taken.” Fake, fake—all fakes.

“Bad guys can be legitimate on paper.”

Then there’s the “misdirected load.” Scott Cornell says the “bad guys can be legitimate on paper,” forming a front company. Once again, they do all the right things, bid on a load and then call up the customer to say, “Hey, we’re in transit, the driver’s having some difficulty with his tractor, he’s going to pull in and get some repairs. We might be a little bit behind schedule, but no problems, we just wanted to let you know….”
Then our villains actually “bobtail in” to get some repairs done, having committed minor sabotage—a belt or a hose, something minimal—all while another member of the group takes care of the trailer. And the driver, who happens to be in on the job, has his very plausible alibi, a genuine bill for the repair job.

The tactics are getting increasingly sophisticated. And Barry Peabody says planning has to be done along the way to figure out the best practice for securing loads and equipment. “Do you just pull over into a parking lot of a shopping mall with no security around you whatsoever, or do you find areas of high visibility? Do you back your trailer up against a wall so the doors can’t get opened, or do you leave it sitting out…?”

After all, a truck can be stolen in minutes—and there’s money to be made even in selling the tractor-trailer. “You know, there’s some security you can get. You can put a kingpin lock on there to stop anybody else from coupling up to your trailer, but… they can open up the back doors of your trailer, and it’s very possible that they could be in and out there in a very short period of time. Now, do they travel around with forklifts if they’ve got to move pallets? No, they don’t, but if you’ve got a load of iPad Minis valued at $700 a pop, and you’ve got 10 minutes, you could pull an awful lot of boxes out of there and be gone.”

Peabody says most insurers haven’t looked at their product since the ‘70s, and yet the trucking industry has changed enormously since that time. “The quality of the trailer is tighter, stronger. The doors are better, and they seal better. The suspension is more reliable, so you don’t have as many vehicles falling into ditches because the suspension gives out. The refrigeration unit that might be on trailers, these things are all controlled now by computers and monitored through the GPS systems and the cellular systems.”

Peabody’s own firm, SGI, has been as guilty as the rest, he admits, of not keeping up to date to meet the concerns of trucking customers. The company is trying to rectify that with its product, Cargo Secure, which offers new features such as coverage for load contamination. Thieves got a head start, but it sounds like the industry is at last catching up.

Meanwhile, the cops keep pace as well. As we go to press, Detective Sergeant Paul LaSalle says one individual from the raids in May has been charged so far with possession of stolen goods over $5,000, with other charges pending. His force is building its case against those in charge of the theft operation. The police know who the crooks are and are closing in. End of the road, no exit…


Original Article

FreightWatch International is warning that we may be seeing a new trend of cargo thieves attempting to use jamming devices to defeat tracking devices.

On July 22, a tractor and trailer hauling pharmaceutical products was stolen from a truck stop in Cartersville, Georgia. The truck was equipped with at least one tracking device concealed within the cargo. Evidence suggests that the thieves attempted to deploy two separate jamming devices to interrupt the communication of possible tracking devices on the shipment. 

The jamming was unsuccessful and law enforcement was able to track the shipment and recover the product intact. There were no arrests, though the investigation continues.

FreightWatch notes that this incident follows closely on the heels of another, in which suspected cargo thieves were apprehended in possession of jamming equipment in Brevard County, Florida, on June 26.

"These two incidents may indicate the beginning of a trend in which cargo thieves are attempting to utilize jammer devices in the U.S. as a counter-measure to covert GPS tracking," says the company, which sells cargo security tools but also tracks and analyzes cargo thefts and trends.

"While the recent jamming events have not proven to be successful, the use of jamming technology represents a potential challenge to the theft recovery process and should be taken seriously," FreightWatch says.

"Outside the U.S., jamming technology has been used by cargo thieves for some time and there are effective risk mitigation techniques deployed in those regions. If the risk of jamming in the U.S. quickly escalates, security programs will need to evolve to address the increased risk in the regions affected."

Original Article