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It is the costliest crime in America, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Organized crime drives it, money fuels it, and it has gone international. It happens nearly three times a day somewhere in America, and in California it happens twice as often as anywhere else in the nation.
We’re talking about cargo theft — the high-cost, big-time crime that you’ve likely never heard about.
“It really is huge,” said California Highway Patrol officer Xavier Spencer. “We estimate nationwide that it’s a $35 billion loss annually just in cargo theft and obviously that only involves the cargo theft that we’re made aware of. A lot of these thefts are not reported.”
Spencer is part of the CHP’s Cargo Theft Interdiction Program or CTIP, and is one of 10 people on the force assigned to fight cargo theft full time in the state. He and just three other men cover the entire region north of Los Angeles County up to the Oregon border.
For the past three months the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit went undercover with CTIP investigators to expose this major crime. Reporters and producers went behind the scenes to track down stolen shipping containers in Stanislaus County; rode along on stings to look for lifted cargo in Gilroy; watched recovery operations at the Port of Oakland and reviewed surveillance video the team used to track down suspects.
“A lot of times these guys will go park their trucks at the truck stop and go inside and clean up or get something to eat and they come out and their trailers and tractors are gone,” Spencer said. “Somebody just stole it within 30 seconds.”
He says often times truckers pull up to an unmanned cargo truck, attach their cabs to the containers and drive away. Other times he says thieves will simply unlock the doors of the trailers and hand-unload the cargo inside. They make off with tons of merchandise — everything from electronics to drugs, computers to military supplies and weapons to wine — that they steal, hide in warehouses and then sell for profit.
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Last year the National Insurance Crime Bureau logged 1,215 cargo theft incidents across the country. That’s up 17 percent from 2010. According to a report from Cargo Net, an offshoot of NICB, California led all states with 304 occurrences of cargo theft in 2011. That’s more than $390 million in theft in the state in just the last two years alone. Texas was second on the list with 173 instances of cargo theft, followed by Florida with 146 occurrences.
Those three states plus New Jersey, Illinois and Georgia accounted for 75 percent of all cargo stolen off of American highways last year. According to the report, food was the most commonly stolen item, followed by electronics, metals and clothing. Data from Freight Watch International, a logistics security provider, the largest cargo heist last year happened in Fremont when drivers made off with $37 million dollars worth of microchips in one haul.
Victims of cargo theft frequently take big hits to their businesses. Griselda Bautista, owner of the Oakland-based warehousing company PCCS Inc., lost $65,000 worth of merchandise in 2008 when a trailer carrying a load of copy paper was lifted from her parking lot.
“It was picked off by a trucker,” Bautista said. “He just came in and broke the pin lock and took off. I couldn’t believe it. I was very upset. Everything that we went through, we lost. I mean, we almost went out of business the year after that because it was a hit that was a mark on your name.”
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Bautista eventually found the trailer in Oakland on International Blvd., but the cargo was gone.
“It’s American pirates — that’s what you got.” Bautista said. “We definitely learned a lesson about leaving a load out there that was unattended.”
In April Spencer filed a federal case that resulted in the indictment of five suspects accused of lifting more than $2 million worth of cargo over the past five years. The suspects involved in Bautista’s case are included in those charges. According to federal court papers, stolen cargo was traced to and from California and places like Alabama and Maryland, even South Korea and Israel.
The CTIP team says cargo theft operations are often times run by organized crime, and international in scope. In June Spencer’s colleague, CHP investigator Mark Locey intercepted a stolen cargo load of plastic resin worth $154,000 that was on its way to Asia.
“It eventually wound back up on the ship going to the Port of Hong Kong,” Locey said. “It had been sold to a company in China.”
Locey prevented the delivery of the plastic resin once he discovered that it had been stolen. He turned it back around in the Pacific Ocean, and seized the load once it returned to the Port of Oakland.
Over the past four months, Locey located more than $500,000 worth of cargo allegedly stolen by the same person who reportedly took the cargo load of plastic resin. That man is now facing 14 felony counts associated with stealing and selling cargo and shipping containers.
Right now cargo theft is a low-risk, high reward proposition because the crime carries minor criminal penalties. Steal a half-million dollars-worth of cargo and a criminal might get six months in jail, according to various law enforcement agencies. Compare that to ten years in prison if a thief gets caught with a half million dollars-worth of cocaine.
“It’s very difficult to prove that everything you recovered was stolen,” Spencer said. “So, sometimes District Attorneys are not willing to take a case that’s going to take a little bit of work.”
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Partly for that reason this crime has largely been kept a secret for years, even as it grows in California and across the country. The CTIP team says that the problem is also being kept quiet by the very industry being victimized.
“Some smaller companies would rather not let other trucking companies know they suffered a loss due to the fact that they don’t want to lose business,” Spencer said. “So, they’ll just have the insurance company pay it off and really not report the losses, so there are a lot we don’t know about.”
And that, says the men who fight this every day, costs each of us in the form of higher prices passed on to consumers as companies lose more and more money off of stolen cargo loads.
“Every consumer that goes into the store to buy something,” Locey said, “chances are they are paying for the cost of this type of theft.”
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Maybe the days of a shotgun rider are once again warranted. Unfortunately, as in he movie Wise Guys, many of these hijacks are facilitated by corrupted drivers. I guess it is a sign of the times.
Make hay while the sun shines boys.
And yet another good reason for using the death penalty.
BEING AN EASY MARK HAS A NATURAL CONSEQUENCE THROUGHOUT HUMAN HISTORY
Why should the government get more involved to do what shipping and trucking companies should do themselves? The same companies that want government out of their business and want tax breaks should not be looking for government solutions. A minimum amount of forethought could prevent much of it. High value cargoes require more surveillance; a load of garbage, not. A company that doesn't use appropriate precautions to protect cargo should pay the price for their lack of due diligence. If you are transporting a small fortune in goods, shouldn't you also be on high alert to protect them. Would you as an individual leave a valuable piece of property exposed to easy theft? It seems that a fair amount of these thefts occur when no one is paying attention and precautions are few. ZEEK
Virtually all commercial trucking rigs have tracking devices ~ but they are located on the tractor. If the trailers were also equipped, drivers could simply log their rigs out of service at a location and computer tracking could alert if the rig or trailer was moved from its "out of service" spot. Yes, even that system can be defeated but it would require a lot of exposure by the thieves and few are willing to increase that risk. Qual-Com systems are very sensitive to any movement and could alert authorities when thefts of "logged out of service" vehicles are in motion. This would require some form of communications device for the driver but since there is already a radio-satellite link with the truck, it would not be difficult to use a frequency side-band for that purpose.
LEFTISTREPORTING
Simple solution. Catch them and put a bullet in their heads. No cost to the tax payer to try and keep them in prison. Cremate them and dump their ashes in a cespool.
Yes, and let's not let a little thing such as murder get in the way.
Im sure if trucking companies bothered with hidden gps systems, this type of crime would probably get reduced drastically, maybe the insurance companies should refuse to insure companies that dont use gps systems as an incentive.
you would think that with a load worth 50 - 150 k they could afford a guard
Actually companies tend to not allow their drivers to be armed because of liabilities.
not talking about the drivers.
an actual armed guard, like in a brinks truck or in the old days riding shotgun. if the load is worth 150k, a few hundred for a guard doesnt seem like much
Buy more ammo and stockpile it in your closet. So far Walmart has the cheapest. I just moved to a new condo and it took me 4 hours to move all of it from one place to the other. Ammo will soon be the answer to all of your problems.
sounds like drivers and dispatchers are helping
theres a new software called delivery on time cops can see traffice live from laptop they know who every theif is and where the goods are you can purchase live satelite imagery if you are president or big shot of a corp 30 above ground and the past imagery for 10 years already where the yell have you people been.WHAT DO YOU THINK THE EVIDANCE WAS IN THE SCOTT PETERSON CASE THAT COULD NOT BE DISCLOSED OR THE HUCKLEBERRY MURDER
Huckleberry Murder??? Finn or HoundDog?
The Wire touched on this and they did a great job of it. Too bad more TV shows can't have that much effort put into them. Just might make TV worth watching...
leftist reporting has the correct solution but our kissy huggy gov. (espcially califurnia) hasn't got the cojenes
Interesting read.. I actually learned something from it for once. I guess it's the circle of life. I wonder how they know when to steal it. I'd think you'd have to know a business, or a driver really well. Figure out their habbits, or learn their schedules. It sort of reminds me of gangster times or something like that. I hope there's a way to crack down on it, but I know life as a driver isn't an easy one. I hope they don't have to go through too much trouble to make deliveries. Anyway, awesome read!
Exactly how many of these so-called pirates have been caught and prosecuted?
A cargo pirate walks into a bar with a paper towel on his head.
The bartender asks, "Hey pirate, what's up with the paper towel?"
The cargo pirate answers, "Arrrr...I have a bounty on me head."
The NRA has a solution for this, just like for every other problem. Give everyone a gun.
Maybe the crime rate is up, but this isn't new.
Instead of American Pirates, shouldn't the be called Highwaymen. More land based
Somebody on the inside has to be telling these mobsters which cargo is worth stealing and which ones are full of toilet papet etc.
What's a man to do but find a deserted island and live like a castaway.......naw, no TV & Internet no thanks.
Capitalism,,at it's worst. Buy,sell, steal, re-sell. A Romney dream world.
as a former owner operator, they forgot to mention that we cant have weapons in the truck for protection. We are held at gun point, knife, and killed bringing you what you have to have to live a normal life. The traffic , the cry anti trucking groups, and Hours places us in Areas that we dont want to be in, and pray we wake up next morning. Ah, nothing will happen until someone makes it with radioactive load and crash it somewhere. Not to mention that Pay is low for the job. I hauled from Medicine, high value loads to tampons, Yes tampons so next time missssss you flip me, remember i have your tampons in my trailer and you may bleed in your pants that i brought to you in my last load . Its not true that only crimes happen because of illegal immigration near borders because most crimes are done from LEGAL CITIZENS, and Border crossings bring a lot of High Value loads, thats why crimes happen there. Some racists here wont hesitate to blame everything on Immigrants that most of them are crime free, like me. I strongly demand that we are allowed to carry weapons for protection in a yearly 40 billion theft industry that we are in. Tell me in what other industry you cant carry weapon for protection if the theft is so high? Also they need to invest more in Secured parkings, rest areas and open more truck parking. So i dont have to f*cking sleep in damn New york or new jersey streets, or pay $20 to park in the only parking area in 200 miles radius. What we Truck drivers, owner operators trucking industry should do is unite and strike for 1 month even tho only 48 hours strike would shut down USA we should do it 1 month to get the msg across. More pay, yes to weapons in truck ( i have one anyways), change hours, and more secure parkings ,is the answer.
Its nice to see someone on here knowing what their talking about. Average Americans do not even begin to understand the job of a truck driver. For someone to say that 90% of the drivers are in on these robberies is just ignorant. Most drivers on the road are just trying to stay alive. To not get robbed while sleeping in their trucks or walking into a truckstop to eat. I wish we could shut down all trucks for just one week even and let people see what being a truck driver is all about. When doing my presentation in college on the trucking industry I ask the one question, Name me one thing, that at one time or another is not moved by trucks".
Could u imagine the cost it would take to put any kind of tracking device in a trailer considering how many trailers there are out there? Trailers come and go out of this country legally by the tens of thousands daily, even the largest, riches company could not afford this type of security and if by chance they did we the people in the end would end up paying for it.
God Bless The American Truck Driver!!!!!
"drivers made off with $37 million dollars worth of microchips in one haul."
Now if I owned a company and needed to transport $37 million of product across the highways, I'm gonna hire an armed detail to babysit that shipment and it's driver until it arrives at it's destination.
Unfortunately as long as incompetency and corruption rules in high places these problems will never be solved. In other words as long as the wolf is guarding the hen house the hens will keep disappearing, the same with piracy on the high seas. All of these problems can be solved but people in power are making lots of money while they fleece the public more and more. The bad news is that we can get the public up in arms over something stupid like with same sex marriage and what consenting adults do because we the people would rather bicker and quarrel with each other while our so called leaders lead us straight to hell.
Our politicians do this to Us daily as well..
And we keep voting them back in office so who's the dummy here?