Rise of the techie cargo thieves: How digitally savvy theft has invaded trucking

One day final spring, Peel police Det. Mark Haywood executed a search warrant on a property west of Toronto and located a semi-trailer loaded with snowmobiles.

“Seeing an entire container full of brand new Ski-Doos valued at, like, $24,000 (each) — that’s a pretty good recovery for our unit,” stated Haywood, who heads the pressure’s cargo theft group.

Part of a sweeping joint investigation referred to as Project Big Rig, the operation resulted within the arrest of 15 suspects and restoration of 28 trailers stocked with $7 million value of things starting from hen to televisions to Sleeman beer.

“Cargo theft definitely is on the rise,” Haywood stated in an interview.

The spike in freight crime is available in lockstep with a ramp-up of extra refined, digitally savvy ways that revolve round id theft and drain the economic system of thousands and thousands of {dollars}, as the upper price of dwelling drives demand for pilfered merchandise.

The variety of cargo thefts — when items are stolen throughout transportation — rose 59 per cent in Canada and the United States final 12 months, in accordance with knowledge analytics agency Verisk’s CargoWeb. The 2,852 incidents adopted a 15 per cent bounce in 2022 and a 20 per cent enhance in 2021.

Experts say extra old style strategies of theft similar to chopping fences at freight yards and hot-wiring semis at truck stops stay common. But even these acts are sometimes knowledgeable by data gleaned from on-line load boards — websites that join shippers and carriers — or phishing scams and different hacking strategies.

“The way it used to be was that they would just randomly steal whatever they could get their hands on,” stated Haywood.

“Now, if they have inside information on something, they’ll actually go into a yard and go through half a dozen trailers until they find the product that they were told is there, and then they’ll steal that particular one.”

Digital hacks and monitoring gadgets similar to Apple AirTags may yield that inside information — cargo contents or location, for instance. They’ve gained traction over the previous 12 months, partially as a result of the strategies are so low-cost, stated Danish Yusuf, CEO of Toronto-based Zensurance.

“The marginal cost of hacking the system is so low because it’s just somebody sitting in their basement somewhere just trying constantly,” he stated.

Other newer approaches that depend on “strategic theft,” the place criminals successfully trick shippers into handing over their items, are catching on too.

The most typical kind is id theft, the place a crew makes use of false documentation to pose as an current fleet, stated Joe Palmer, who heads insurance coverage agency Gallagher Canada’s transportation group.

“A thief online can find the identity of a legitimate carrier … get their credentials and basically hold themselves to be somebody that they’re not,” he stated.

Malefactors may bid an irresistibly low value to move a cargo.

“They basically are flooding people’s inboxes and phone lines to try to get their hands on a load. ‘Hey, we’re ABC Trucking, we have trucks available to haul your freight,’” Palmer stated.

Once obtained, the expensive cargo is never seen by professional eyes once more — till it hits the retail shelf, shorn of its illicit tail.

Last April, a thief walked away with $23.8 million in gold and money from an Air Canada warehouse after presenting phoney paperwork, in accordance with an October courtroom submitting from safety agency Brink’s. The incident marked essentially the most infamous instance lately of a so-called fictitious pickup — utilizing false identification or paperwork to pose as a professional driver in particular person.

Fictitious pickups — additionally referred to as fraudulent pickups — jumped 600 per cent in 2022 in Canada and the U.S., although they nonetheless account for a minority of the full, in accordance with CargoWeb.

Illegal wholesalers usually current a “wish list” of things in sizzling demand, a lot the best way auto theft works now, stated Haywood.

Food and drinks, family merchandise and metals now comprise Canada’s most sought-after stolen items, in that order, in accordance with CargoWeb.

Food inflation over the previous two years sparked a commensurate spike in demand for meat and different edible objects.

“They might be able to pick up a $100,000 load for $30,000,” Haywood stated of grocers on the gray market. “There’s no way of tracing products like that. It’s not like they have serial numbers on packs of chicken.”

Purloined poultry or pork can pose a well being danger, nonetheless.

“Sometimes these things are stolen, they’re kept by the roadside for a day or two and possibly the refrigeration unit’s gone off for a day,” the police detective stated.

Electronics additionally make for high-value targets.

“Generally, those loads will be sectioned off and sold in lots to different brokers. It’s difficult to pawn an entire 53-foot trailer full of 60-inch big-screen televisions.”

The eventual retailers for decent family items embody unbiased shops, flea markets and on-line platforms similar to Facebook Marketplace and eBay, Haywood stated.

To go away as few fingerprints as attainable, crime rings usually resort to “double brokering,” all organized on-line.

“They’ll hire a legit trucking company to take it across the border or to the final destination so they don’t take the risk of the actual trucking. And then they pick it up on the other end,” stated Yusuf.

The worth of freight stolen throughout Canada and the U.S. final 12 months totalled $449 million, a 47 per cent bounce from 2022, in accordance with CargoWeb.

The agency discovered that Ontario accounted for an astounding 83 per cent of all cargo theft incidents in Canada, with the Toronto space because the reddest of hotspots, although police say offences are radiating westward as perpetrators attempt to evade a regional crackdown.

While the variety of reported incidents in Canada really fell by a handful in 2023, the determine nonetheless sat 42 per cent larger than 2021 ranges.

Meanwhile, consultants say the worth loss possible elevated.

“We see a lot of loads that are worth $500,000 and higher. We have some clients that carry cargo limits of $2 million,” stated John Miklus, president of the American Institute of Marine Underwriters.

Many incidents go unreported, he added. Reputation and insurance coverage fee hikes are the primary causes.

“If I’m running a cargo business, I don’t want people to know I was robbed because then it hurts my ability to get more business,” stated Yusuf. “If I fell for a phishing rip-off as an example.

“These thieves are getting smarter. They see people using technology in all other spaces, and cargo theft is no different.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed March 24, 2024.

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