Fake Broker Steers $273,000 Seafood Load to a North Arlington Street

NORTH ARLINGTON, N.J. — A tractor-trailer hauling about 29,000 pounds of frozen seafood pulled onto Porete Avenue on Oct. 3 after, police say, someone posing as the shipment’s freight broker directed the driver there. North Arlington officers arrived while two people were moving pallets into a 26-foot box truck. They stopped the transfer and recovered the entire load, valued at more than $273,000.

According to the North Arlington Police Department, the driver had received a series of phone calls and text messages from a man who falsely claimed to be associated with the broker responsible for the shipment. The messages told the driver to divert part of the load to North Arlington, where it would supposedly be moved to another truck. Officers responded to a report of suspicious activity and found the transfer under way. The cargo was mostly frozen shrimp, along with salmon, conch meat and branzino.

Investigators determined that the person directing the transfer had no connection to the legitimate broker. Police have not said who reported the activity or how the caller obtained the driver’s number and load details. They also have not identified the broker, carrier or shipper.

Police took two people into custody without incident: an 18-year-old Bronx man and a juvenile. The man is charged with second-degree theft by deception, second-degree false representation, second-degree conspiracy and first-degree employing a juvenile in the commission of a crime, according to police. He also received motor-vehicle summonses for driving without a license, failing to have an insurance card and operating an uninsured vehicle. The charges are allegations, and he is presumed innocent. Police have not announced an arrest of the person who posed as the broker.

The Kearny attempt

North Arlington was not the first time this approach was tried. Kearny police say the same 18-year-old was one of two men charged after a nearly identical attempt in their town on Sept. 1. New Jersey court records support that: both cases are filed under the same state identification number, one in Hudson County, where a complaint was filed Sept. 2, and one in Bergen County, filed Oct. 3.

According to Kearny Det. Sgt. John Fabula, a driver hauling a commercial load reported getting unexpected instructions from unknown people. The instructions directed the driver to transfer the load at an alternate location on the 600 block of Belleville Turnpike. On arrival, the driver saw several people standing near two large box trucks. The driver found that suspicious and called the employer, who advised contacting law enforcement. Officers detained two men seen leaving a box truck that matched the description the driver provided. Both were charged with offenses related to cargo theft, then processed and released on summonses pending court. Kearny police put the value of that load at $75,000 or more.

The two attempts happened 32 days apart and in two counties: Kearny is in Hudson County, North Arlington in Bergen. Both used the same pattern: a mid-route instruction from someone posing as part of the shipment chain, a nearby street as the transfer point, and a box truck waiting there. As of Oct. 15, court records show both cases still at the complaint stage, with no indictment recorded in either county. Neither department nor either county prosecutor has said whether the cases are being investigated together, or who was on the other end of the phone.

The national picture

Overall cargo theft has fallen, but schemes built on deception have been slower to drop. Verisk CargoNet counted 677 supply chain theft incidents across the U.S. and Canada in the second quarter of 2026, down 26% from a year earlier, even as estimated losses more than doubled to $304.6 million. Fictitious pickups barely moved: 158 in the quarter, compared with 165 a year earlier. Over the same period, incidents CargoNet classified as straight theft fell from 488 to 378.

Why it matters

Neither scheme required breaking a lock. In both, a phone call or text message redirected the freight while it was already on the road, from someone the driver had no quick way to verify. In Kearny, the driver stopped and called the employer before handing anything over, and the attempt ended there. In North Arlington, the load reached the transfer point.

The control that separates those two outcomes is procedural. Carriers can adopt a written rule that no change of delivery address or consignee is accepted once a load is moving unless dispatch confirms it, using contact details already on file rather than the number that just called. Brokers and shippers can tell carriers at tender that they will never redirect freight to a driver directly by text. With that rule in place, the driver’s call back to dispatch becomes standard practice rather than a judgment call made at the curb.

CargoChronicle will follow both cases in Bergen and Hudson county courts, including any indictment and any arrest of the person who posed as the broker.