As we regularly report, cargo theft in the US continues to rise rapidly, fuel in part by increasingly sophisticated types of fraud.
One of those types of fraud is something called “double brokering, was recently used to steal some $1 million in vodka from Food Network celebrity and restaurateur Guy Fieri and partner rocker Sammy Hagar, according to an interview with Fieri on the 60 Minutes show broadcast Sunday night.
As reported by Transport Topics, two truckloads of Santo Tequila — a brand co-owned by Fieri and Hagar — disappeared somewhere between Texas and Pennsylvania late last year after fake carriers obtained the load through an online freight scam.
"How do you lose, you know, that many thousands of bottles of tequila?" Fieri asked 60 Minutes. He said that if a theft like this can happen to his company, “then everybody’s vulnerable.”
The stolen shipment is now a high-profile example of how digital fraud is reshaping cargo theft. According to Fieri, the thieves used forged carrier identities and fake GPS data to make the load appear in transit while it was actually being sent to some distant location.
Santo Spirits CEO Dan Butkus told 60 Minutes that a 3PL used by the company hired a carrier that re-brokered the job to another firm, which turned out to be fictitious.
The impostor carrier used forged documents, phony email accounts and fake phone numbers to appear legitimate, he said. Thieves sent video of a supposed breakdown and routine delay updates to mask the fraud, according to the Transport Topics report.
The GPS data itself was manipulated. Butkus said the signal was “spoofed or emulated,” so the shipment appeared on tracking systems to be near Washington, D.C., before supposedly closing in on the expected Pennsylvania facility. The tequila, in fact, had been rerouted west..
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 Investigators interviewed by 60 Minutes said the drivers who picked up the loads were legitimate and unaware of the deception. They were reportedly redirected by criminals to deliver the trailers to Los Angeles, where the cargo vanished.
Three weeks later, the Los Angeles Police Department’s Cargo Theft Unit recovered about 11,000 bottles in a Southeast L.A. warehouse. A second truck and its cargo remain missing.
This incident is a textbook illustration of how cyber-enabled freight crime has evolved from parking-lot pilfering to remote manipulation of digital systems. Keith Lewis, COO of freight security firm CargoNet, told 60 Minutes that online diversion thefts have surged 1,200% in the past four years.
“It happens multiple times a day,” he said, noting that the cost of such losses “100% falls back on the consumer.”
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