Two separate truck loads of California walnuts worth about $300,000 have been heisted as reported by The Record Searchlight:
Deputies checked with the trucking company hired by San Antonio-based
Hill Country Bakery and learned that the man who took the walnuts
wasn't actually the one hired for the job, they said. In both cases, the driver is described as about 6 feet, 2 inches tall
and weighing 198 pounds. He's said to speak with a "very distinctive
Russian accent," deputies said. The man somehow got the correct purchase
numbers to show the companies to pull off the thefts, they said.
Cargo theft on U.S. highways is a $35 billion a year racket for organized crime which carries little risk as reported by NBC:
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," [California Highway Patrol
officer Xavier] Spencer said. "So, sometimes District Attorneys are not
willing to take a case that's going to take a little bit of work."
Often cargo theft -- such as the case of the purloined walnuts -- is as simple as a fraudulent pickup which is described by the National Insurance Crime Bureau in its 2010 National Cargo Theft Report: "a driver or trucking company (often accessing cargo load information
through online brokering sites) impersonates a legitimate carrier and
secures a contract to transport cargo. The cargo is then stolen, often
with no trace of the fraudulent driver or trucking company."