Cargo thieves are attacking the U.S. supply chain at alarming rates
America’s supply chain is under attack.
From coast to coast, organized criminal groups are hitting trucks on the road, breaking into warehouses and pilfering expensive items from train cars, according to industry experts and law enforcement officials CNBC interviewed during a six-month investigation.
It’s all part of a record surge in cargo theft in which criminal networks in the U.S. and abroad exploit technology intended to improve supply chain efficiency and use it to steal truckloads of valuable products. Armed with doctored invoices, the fraudsters impersonate the staff of legitimate companies in order to divert cargo into the hands of criminals.
The widespread scheme is “low risk and a very high reward,” according to Keith Lewis, Vice President of Verisk CargoNet, which tracks theft trends in the industry.
“The return on investment is almost 100%,” he said. “And if there’s no risk of getting caught, why not do it better and do it faster?”
In 2024, Verisk CargoNet recorded 3,798 incidents of cargo theft, representing a 26% increase over 2023.
Total reported losses topped nearly $455 million, according to Verisk CargoNet, but industry experts told CNBC that number is likely lower than the true toll because many cases go unreported. Numerous experts who spoke to CNBC estimate losses are close to $1 billion or more a year.
Train cargo thefts alone shot up about 40% in 2024, with more than 65,000 reported incidents, according to the Association of American Railroads.
Industry experts and law enforcement officials say a more sophisticated and insidious form of cargo theft called strategic theft is also on the rise.
The way the system is supposed to work is this: A shipper pays a broker, and the broker, after taking its fee, pays the carrier, the trucking company that moves the load.
In strategic theft, criminals use deceptive tactics to trick shippers, brokers or carriers into handing cargo or legitimate payments, sometimes both, over to them instead of the legitimate companies.
Strategic theft represented 8% of all cargo theft in 2020, according to Verisk CargoNet figures, but by the end of 2024, it had risen to represent about one-third.
Tracking down the fraudsters, particularly if they are overseas, is almost an impossible task, Lewis said.
“Think of identity theft,” Lewis said. “Think of a friend that’s had their identity stolen or their credit card stolen. There’s no difference … There’s no bread crumb trail to follow. It’s a ghost.”
Verisk CargoNet said it has tracked criminal groups that have tried to disrupt the U.S. supply chain to origins in 32 countries.
‘License to steal’
“There’s no deterrent for these guys,” said Jerry Jacobs, who oversees risk management at Prosponsive Logistics in Atlanta. The company is a broker connecting shippers with the carriers that move their products.
In an interview with CNBC, Jacobs said the criminals “literally have a license to steal.”
“You’re hiding out in a foreign country, and all you need is a cell phone and a computer to conduct this type of fraud,” he said.
“Every day, we’re seeing the bad guys trying to infiltrate our network. And our sales reps have to constantly stay vigilant,” Jacobs said. “I say this all the time to my sales folks, that there’s probably a 33% chance that you’re going to be talking to a bad guy that’s looking to steal freight.”
Jacobs told CNBC during his interview in February that he was actively dealing with a fraud case. The offenders had stolen his company’s identity and were booking shipments, he said. Their goal was to convince a legitimate trucking company to pick up a shipment and unwittingly deliver it so that the criminals, rather than the real carriers, would get paid, he said.
Jacobs showed CNBC the online platform used by brokers to book shipments, called DAT Freight and Analytics. There were listings purportedly initiated by his company, but they weren’t legitimate — they were booked, he said, by the criminals.
“Right now, we’re dealing with a ton of calls about this,” Jacobs said at the time. “A lot of [carriers], unfortunately, picked up the shipment already for the bad guys, and they have already delivered it for the bad guys.”
Weeks later, Jacobs was still dealing with the fallout. He said some of the loads were delivered, but not others, suggesting cargo and payments were stolen in the scheme. None of the carriers were paid, he said.
Jacobs said crime costs the average consumer, too, as cargo theft fuels retail price increases.
“I have to pay more at the grocery store, at the checkout line, because these bad guys want to come in and steal freight,” he said.
Barry Conlon, founder and CEO of Overhaul, an in-transit supply chain security and risk management company based in Austin, Texas, said the crime groups are very familiar with how freight is moved across the U.S.
“They have people who are literally pulling the information off websites, scraping it, in some cases,” Conlon told CNBC. “And then they’re attacking at a chosen location once they see the product they want. And it’s literally gone into the supply chain within days.”
He contrasted the ease and payoff of cargo theft to the high risk and often lower reward of a bank robbery.
“Rob a million-dollar load, that’s going to give you hundreds of thousands of dollars in return. And there’s literally no risk,” he said.
Cargo theft, which is almost always nonviolent, is considered a property crime. According to industry experts, it’s underreported for a reason.
“A lot of cases, they don’t report it because they feel they’re not going to get it back. It’s been weeks since they lost it and they’ve just found out about it,” Conlon said.
Overhaul estimates there will be a 22% increase in incidents of cargo theft in 2025, according to the company’s most recent report on trends in the industry.
Scott Cornell, the national transportation leader for insurance company Travelers Insurance
, said he is also alarmed at what he’s seeing in the industry.
″[There are] two things that I always point out about the organized cargo theft rings that are committing these crimes,” Cornell said. “They know what to steal and when to steal it, and they’re really good at return on investment.”
Food and beverage is the thieves’ No. 1 targeted commodity, according to Verisk CargoNet.
“It’s consumable. So, the evidence disappears,” Cornell said. “It’s hard to chase. If you’re a cargo theft investigator and you’re trying to do a recovery investigation, the evidence is going be consumed, right? Or it’s going to spoil. There’s no barcode on a pistachio.”
Household goods are the second-most commonly targeted cargo, followed by electronics, Verisk CargoNet found.
Companies respond
Cargo loss isn’t something many retailers are eager to talk about.
Meta,
which was hit by a $500,000 theft of its Ray-Ban and Oculus glasses last year in Texas, declined to comment to CNBC. Nike
, whose sneakers are favorites of cargo thieves, according to police and court records, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The problem is “noticeably increasing,” said Birger Buesching, head of the supply chain for Philips’ personal health consumer business, which includes Sonicare toothbrushes and Norelco shavers, among other products.
“Two, three years ago, I didn’t have to worry about this,” Buesching told CNBC in February at the Manifest Conference in Las Vegas, where companies that focus on the supply chain showcased solutions to protect it. “But we do see an uptick in any kind of commercial shipments, bigger value shipments that are going out to our customers or traditional retail customers.”
Replacing a stolen load is not so simple, he said.
“First of all, we can’t ship that load on time and in full as we promise, so we’re letting our customers down,” Buesching said. “Often we have safety stock, so we can usually backfill orders very quickly, within days. But especially when you have custom-made products, then it might take a little longer, because you have to make more of that product.”
Ellen Kapiloff, vice president of operations for North and Central America at Lacoste, said the threat of cargo theft can lead to inventory challenges on the floor.
“If you’re a consumer and you wanted this shirt and we only made 100 of them and 50 of them were stolen, we are strategically going to place the other 50 in a different location, as well as a different channel,” Kapiloff told CNBC in an interview at the Manifest conference. “So, it might not be available to you at a store or online when you want it.”
Coincidentally, in February, just 10 days after CNBC spoke with Kapiloff, California Highway Patrol’s Cargo Theft Interdiction Program served a search warrant at a store in Los Angeles’ fashion district. Officers found five boxes containing Lacoste slides footwear that law enforcement said was part of a large cargo heist.
California sees more cargo theft than any other state in the U.S.
In a separate case, in May 2024, athletic apparel retailer Lululemon
reported a burglary at a distribution center in Ontario, California, in which thieves made off with “well over a million dollars’ worth of Lululemon product,” according to the California Highway Patrol.
Police said a person was arrested on suspicion of selling the stolen goods.
Source : CNBC