Some shellfish thieves made off with $400,000 worth of lobster from a Massachusetts distribution center just a few days after Christmas. The fresh catch left the Lineage Logistics shipping facility in Taunton, Massachusetts, but never arrived at its intended destinations, several Costco stores in Illinois and Minnesota, according to Boston 25 News. Police are now searching for the truck and the driver who pirated the shipment.
This wasn’t some Fast and Furious-style truck hijacking on the Mass Pike, either. The perpetrators impersonated the actual shipper online, made all the arrangements, and sailed away before the warehouse knew what happened. From NBC 10 News:
“There was a dash in the email,” Burroughs said. “That was the only difference from the real company. The person came in, took off with the load, and who knows where it is now.”
Talk about a phishing scam. AÂ company can add all the cybersecurity software it wants, but the problem here was that the people corresponding with the fake shipper didn’t notice something fishy about the email address. Security systems are only as good as the people who use them. Like the stolen lobster, somebody’s definitely in hot water for this.
Lobstah pirates
As unique as the target is, this is not an unusual technique for high-value thefts these days. As Dylan Rexing, President and CEO of Rexing Companies, a logistics company out of Evansville, Indiana, told Fox 32 Chicago:
This theft wasn’t random. It followed a pattern we’re seeing more and more, where criminals impersonate legitimate carriers using spoofed emails and burner phones to hijack high-value freight while it’s in transit.
Rexing also mentioned that police told him that ten days before this theft, a truckload of crab was stolen from the same Massachusetts facility. Someone he knows recently had nine loads worth over $250,000 stolen within a five-day work week. Police and the FBI are investigating, but Rexing believes that more resources are needed to stop this from happening. He has every right to be crabby.Â
Food is too expensive, but as much as I’d like to frame this as Robin Hood vigilantes stealing from the rich to give lobsters to the poor, that’s sadly not the case here. They’re not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they can sell food quickly to get the hot product off their hands. Food also doesn’t have serial numbers that can be tracked, like firearms or the top-end VCRs that Dom Toretto and his crew stole.
Ultimately, everyone loses. Companies aren’t going to just eat such losses, so they’ll raise prices even higher to compensate, adding to the already high inflation rate. The moment profits aren’t as high as companies want them to be, they lay people off, adding to rising unemployment rates at a time when it’s already difficult to find a job. We can make all the wisequacks we want, but they don’t change the fact that things are bad, and this is just one more symptom.
