Cargo Chronicle

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

Tim Kreiner — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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.

Stolen Water Pik Load Ends in Two-Year Sentence and an Online-Selling Ban

Tim Kreiner — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

MEMPHIS — A federal judge has ordered a Memphis man to repay Water Pik, Inc. $420,013.48 for a trailer-load of its products stolen in Memphis in 2023. The judge also barred him from selling online without his probation officer’s approval, a condition that reflects how the goods were moved. Gregory Luss was sentenced Sept. 16 to 24 months in federal prison, the maximum the government had agreed to recommend.

Luss pleaded guilty in March to one count of possessing goods stolen from an interstate shipment. He was not charged with taking the trailer, and his plea agreement contains no account of who did. According to prosecutors, the trailer was bound for Amazon when it was taken from a Bledsoe Cove location in Memphis on Oct. 20, 2023. That same day, Luss listed a large inventory of Water Pik products on an eBay account in his own name.

The court judgment dates the end of his offense to Dec. 11, 2023, seven weeks after the theft. Prosecutors say that period included a confrontation in Texas, where he tried to take back products he had sold to a buyer, then struck a warehouse manager and six vehicles while fleeing.

The case moved slowly. Luss was indicted in March 2025, arrested that April, and sentenced nearly three years after the trailer disappeared. Under his plea deal, the government agreed to recommend no more than 24 months, and Luss waived his right to appeal any sentence at or below that cap. His lawyer asked for less. In a sentencing memorandum, he argued that Luss runs a construction and grounds-maintenance business in Memphis and north Mississippi that would fail without him, hurting his ability to pay restitution. U.S. District Judge Thomas L. Parker imposed the full 24 months, plus three years of supervised release.

The supervision terms go well beyond the standard. Luss may not operate an online storefront or seller profile of any kind without his probation officer’s approval. He must give the officer access to all of his financial information and may not open new lines of credit without approval. Restitution is due in monthly payments of at least 10% of his gross income.

The FBI Nashville Field Office’s Cargo Theft Task Force investigated the case.

The national picture

A full trailer taken from a lot is the kind of theft that has been receding nationally. Verisk CargoNet recorded fewer organized thefts of unattended, loaded trailers in the second quarter of 2026. Total incidents across the U.S. and Canada fell 26% from a year earlier, to 677, even as losses more than doubled to $304.6 million.

Why it matters

The restitution order lands on the manufacturer. That is a reminder that the company absorbing a cargo loss is not always the one that lost custody of the freight. The selling ban shows where this case turned: the goods appeared for sale the same day they disappeared. Two measures cover both ends of that timeline. Shippers and carriers can secure staged trailers and report a missing load immediately. Brand owners can watch online marketplaces for sudden surges of their own products.

Jury Convicts Two in $2 Million Freight-Theft Ring That Bought Real Trucking Companies

Tim Kreiner — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

LOS ANGELES — A federal jury on Sept. 29 convicted two men of conspiring to steal cargo from Southern California warehouses in a scheme that, prosecutors said, ran on established trucking companies the ring bought or took over. Members booked genuine loads under those companies’ names, picked up the freight and never delivered it. The U.S. Attorney’s Office estimated losses at no less than $2 million.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office identified the men as Arshpreet Singh, 28, of Sacramento, and Vikramjeet Singh, 31, of Fontana. Arshpreet Singh was found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit theft from interstate shipments. Vikramjeet Singh was found guilty of the theft conspiracy and acquitted of the wire fraud count. The verdicts followed a seven-day trial before U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang, who set sentencing for Jan. 20, 2027. Arshpreet Singh faces up to 20 years in federal prison and Vikramjeet Singh up to five, according to the office.

According to prosecutors, the conspiracy ran from March 2024 to at least June 2025. Its members bought licensed carriers or posed as their owners, enrolled the companies with load boards and freight brokers, rented trailers, and arrived at shippers’ docks in tractors marked with the carrier’s name. They signed for loads headed out of state and drove off. Thefts were reported in Fontana, Vernon, Santa Fe Springs, Perris, Long Beach, Compton, Pico Rivera, Chino, Moreno Valley and other Southern California cities, as well as Grand Prairie, Texas. The cargo included televisions, laptops, vacuums, solar panels, LED lights, shoes and tires.

The government’s trial memorandum, whose factual account the defense disputed, describes how the companies changed hands. The owner of Z&F Transportation, a Texas carrier, listed it on Facebook Marketplace in March 2024. Prosecutors said Arshpreet Singh met him at a hotel in Denton, Texas, paid cash and took over the company’s email logins; the office put the price at about $22,000. Ten days later, a load of LG televisions booked under Z&F’s name left a Fontana warehouse for Florida and never arrived. In May 2024, a second carrier, Skyways, was sold through Facebook Marketplace for $17,000 in cash plus a $6,000 check that bounced, drawn on a company prosecutors tied to Arshpreet Singh. Between May 28 and June 3, according to the memo, Skyways was used to pick up LG laptops, televisions, tires and solar panels that were never delivered.

Not every owner was paid in full, or at all. One sold his carrier on the condition that no loads be booked until the transfer was complete, but the buyer changed the company’s email password and began booking freight anyway, the memo says. Another refused to sell. While he was traveling abroad in January 2025, he began receiving messages that his company was stealing loads, and a broker sent him a notarized letter documenting a sale he had never signed. A trailer-rental owner, the memo adds, shut down his business after trailers he had rented out kept turning up in thefts.

The industry’s own checks helped unravel the scheme. Uber Freight, one of the brokers used, ran an IP analysis that linked Skyways to two other carriers already involved in thefts, prosecutors said. On July 11, 2024, a Pico Rivera shipper noticed that a phone number on a pickup matched one from a prior theft and called the carrier’s original owner, who said his company was being used to steal cargo. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s detectives arrested Vikramjeet Singh as he left the warehouse. Prosecutors said Arshpreet Singh had sent him an image of that load’s rate confirmation the same day. In January 2025, Arshpreet Singh was arrested in Colton while, according to prosecutors, he and two others were trying to take three empty trailers. Officers found bolt cutters, license plates from several states and a placard bearing the name of the carrier whose owner had refused to sell.

Three other men were charged in the same indictment. As of late August, prosecutors described one as a fugitive and another as in state custody. None of the three has been convicted. The FBI’s Inland Violent Crime Suppression Task Force, IRS Criminal Investigation, the Fontana Police Department, the San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles County sheriff’s departments and the Fort Worth Police Department investigated the case.

The method on trial in Los Angeles is one the industry’s main theft tracker has been watching. Verisk CargoNet recorded 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. CargoNet attributed part of that decline to fewer non-delivery schemes in which thieves acquire an existing, reputable carrier and book freight under its established authority and reputation, with no intention of delivering. The drop in that kind of scheme was most pronounced in California and Texas, the company said.

That is what makes the scheme hard to stop at the booking stage. When a carrier changes hands, its operating authority and track record go with it, so vetting that confirms only that the authority is active and the history is clean will pass it. What exposed this ring was attention to change: a reused phone number, shared IP addresses, an owner who could be reached through contact details from before the sale. A sound tender-and-release procedure treats a recent change in a carrier’s ownership, email, phone or dispatch contacts as a trigger to verify through details already on file before freight is released.

CargoChronicle will follow the case through sentencing in January and any further action against the remaining co-defendants.

Man Charged After $680,000 Electronics Trailer Taken in Fake FedEx Pickup at New Castle Warehouse

Tim Kreiner — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

NEW CASTLE, Del. — A pair who identified themselves as FedEx employees drove away from a New Castle warehouse on Sept. 14 with a trailer holding more than $680,000 in electronics, using driver’s licenses and shipping documents that Delaware State Police say were fraudulent. Troopers recovered the trailer the next day in Newark with all of its cargo inside and arrested one of the two; police have not announced an arrest of the other.

According to state police, the two arrived in a tractor at about 9:15 a.m. at a business in the 1100 block of River Road. They presented the licenses and paperwork for a loaded trailer, hitched it to the tractor and left. A short time later, the shipping documents were found to be fraudulent. Police have not named the business or said who uncovered the fraud.

On Sept. 15, troopers were called to University Plaza in Newark, where someone from the business had found the tractor-trailer parked. While speaking with the caller, troopers saw one of the suspects walking toward the rig. They determined that the licenses shown at the warehouse and the tractor-trailer’s registration plate were fraudulent. Police have not said how the business located the trailer.

The man, 35, of Manteca, Calif., was taken into custody without incident and brought to Troop 2. He is charged with theft of property valued at $100,000 or more and first- and second-degree forgery, which police list as felonies, plus second-degree conspiracy and a fictitious registration plate offense. After arraignment in Justice of the Peace Court, he was committed to the Department of Correction on $66,550 secured bond. The charges are allegations, and he is presumed innocent.

Police have released no name or description of the second person. The State Police Criminal Investigations Unit is continuing the investigation; anyone with information can contact Detective S. Marioni at (302) 365-8388 or Delaware Crime Stoppers at 1-800-847-3333.

Fictitious pickups have held nearly steady even as other cargo theft has fallen. Verisk CargoNet counted 158 fictitious pickups across the U.S. and Canada in the second quarter of 2026, down only slightly from 165 a year earlier, while incidents it classified as theft fell from 488 to 378. Overall, CargoNet recorded 677 supply chain theft incidents in the quarter, 26% fewer than in Q2 2025, yet estimated losses more than doubled to $304.6 million. “Lower incident volume should not be mistaken for lower risk,” said Keith Lewis, CargoNet’s vice president of operations.

Police have not described the warehouse’s release procedures or what was checked at the dock. But the order of events in their account — papers and IDs presented, trailer gone, fraud discovered afterward — is the weakness a fictitious pickup exploits. The checks that close it happen before release: confirming the pickup with the carrier or broker through contact details already on file, not those printed on the presented paperwork, and matching the driver, tractor and plate to what was tendered. Neither depends on spotting a forged license by eye.

CargoChronicle will follow the case through the Delaware courts, including any arrest of the second suspect.

Two More Sentenced in Philadelphia Cargo-Theft Crew That Stole $230,000 in Dimes

Tim Kreiner — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two Philadelphia men were sentenced to federal prison this month over a crew that broke into tractor-trailers across the city in 2023. Prosecutors say the group stole more than $1.5 million in freight from more than 10 victims, including over $230,000 in newly minted U.S. dimes.

Haneef Palmer, 33, was sentenced to 121 months on September 9, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced it the next day. Chief U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone sentenced Rakiem Savage, 28, to 108 months on September 15. Both men also received three years of supervised release.

Palmer’s longest term is on a robbery count, and he was ordered to pay $1,080,786.44 in restitution, the government’s total for all of the crew’s thefts. Savage was ordered to pay $234,474.80, the value of the stolen dimes.

The two are among ten defendants in United States v. Savage. A third, Salahudin Reddy, 39, was sentenced in June to 94 months, and an amended judgment on September 1 set his restitution at $893,574.77. Savage pleaded guilty to all ten counts in October 2025, Reddy to eight counts in March and Palmer to all ten later that month.

The other seven defendants have pleaded not guilty. Jury selection in their trial is set for November 6. Palmer and Reddy are both appealing. Palmer filed notice on September 14, and the Third Circuit has stayed his appeal pending a judgment order from the district court. Reddy has filed twice, in June and again this month.

According to court filings, the crew hunted for tractor-trailers parked around Philadelphia, targeting ones left unattended overnight or whose drivers were asleep. The superseding indictment says members called others in when they found a target, cut in with bolt cutters, often posted lookouts and split the proceeds. They moved goods in vehicles including a box truck and sold them to local buyers.

Court filings list thefts on 16 dates between January 27 and July 20, 2023. The loads included 36 LG televisions, 60 cases of tequila, 10,000 pounds of frozen turkey wings and 2.5 pallets of Tito’s vodka. The superseding indictment quotes a March 31 text from Palmer to the group: “From Tvs Appliances Liquor & Meat … We Split Everything.”

The heaviest stretch came in April 2023, when prosecutors say the crew took more than $1 million in goods in about two weeks. On April 1, Palmer and Savage joined in robbing a trailer hauling commercial refrigerators. Prosecutors say the driver woke to find the crew unloading his truck and was chased, grabbed, forced underneath a box truck and injured.

Over the next nine days, the crew hit two trailers loaded with snow crab, each carrying more than 30,000 pounds by the government’s count, and one hauling 103 Samsung televisions.

The dime shipment was headed from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia to the Federal Reserve Bank in Miami. A 2024 court opinion, citing a detective’s affidavit, says the trailer sat overnight in a Walmart lot when it was hit early on April 13. Surveillance video showed 10 or more people in dark clothing arriving in two vehicles, and investigators found bolt cutters at the scene. Prosecutors estimated the load at more than 11,700 pounds of coins.

Police obtained a warrant for data from cell towers serving the area. It showed a call between Savage’s and Palmer’s phones while the heist was underway, and Judge Beetlestone refused to throw out that evidence in July 2024.

Prosecutors also cited a months-long group text chat the crew used to coordinate thefts and congratulate one another. The day after the dime heist, Savage sent the group a screenshot of a social media post about it and wrote, “We made it!” The indictments allege members later cashed dimes at Coinstar machines in Maryland and Pennsylvania credit union branches.

Savage’s sentence also covers a separate racketeering case involving Omerta, a group based in Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion neighborhood. He admitted taking part in its counterfeiting and pandemic unemployment fraud and was ordered to repay $37,425 in that case. His lawyer had asked for 72 months, arguing the cargo losses were financial and largely recoverable through restitution.

Nationally, thefts of unattended trailers are declining, according to Verisk CargoNet. Its second-quarter 2026 analysis counted 677 theft incidents in the U.S. and Canada, down 26% from a year earlier, even as estimated losses more than doubled to $304.6 million.

The Philadelphia case shows how long a crew can run when loaded trailers sit unguarded: thefts on at least 16 dates over roughly six months. For shippers and carriers, it argues for tighter rules on where high-value loads park overnight and how they are locked and watched. The April 1 robbery adds a harder lesson: a sleeping driver is not a safeguard, and can become a victim.