Organized Crime, New Tactics by Thieves again Sends Incidents Up Double Digits

Supply Chain Digest Says...   Previously centered around recently purchased authorities in California, organized crime groups are now primarily interested in authorities in states not thought to be high-risk for cargo theft, after many companies have instituted policies that they will not accept new carriers from the state of California into their network. What do you say? Click here to send us your comments

That according to the latest quarterly report from freight security firm CargoNet, a Verisk company.

CargoNet says once again that the increase was driven in part by the growing involvement of organized crime in cargo theft, driving new tactics that are being used by freight thieves.

The 14% rise in theft incidents took the value of stolen freight to $39 million dollars in the quarter, which works out to an average of just over $50,000 per theft incident.

Once again, and oddly, just three states - California, Texas and Illinois – represented an oversized 52% of all the theft incidents in the quarter.

Again as usual, warehouses were the top type of facility targeted by thieves, followed by truck stops.

Organized Crime Tactics

The report says that the primary drivers of cargo theft continue to be organized crime groups specializing in strategic forms of cargo theft that typically involve some form of document fraud and identity theft

Sophisticated Phishing Schemes: Organized crime groups have intensified efforts to gain unauthorized access to motor carriers' official email accounts. These compromised accounts are then used to bid on shipments and bypass compliance checks. This method has grown in popularity in response to much of the industry instituting policies that rate confirmation documents should only be sent to official emails.

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Purchased Authorities: Previously centered around recently purchased authorities in California, organized crime groups are now primarily interested in authorities in states not thought to be high-risk for cargo theft, after many companies have instituted policies that they will not accept new carriers from the state of California into their network.

Enhanced Evasion Techniques: Organized crime groups that are stealing part of a shipment or stealing a whole shipment are now switching license plates, driver's licenses, and truck and trailer numbers between each pickup to combat growing reliance on publicly available FMCSA vehicle inspection data. Multiple pickups are being arranged in multi-day crime sprees, and stolen shipments are being staged at central collection points so that malicious actors can focus on obtaining as many loads as possible before the industry learns of their criminal activity.

In conclusion, CargoNet expects strategic theft crews will continue to evolve to evade compliance checks.

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