Man Fieri’s $1M tequila heist reveals how thieves prey on US vehicles

No weapons. No midnight ambush.

Only a telephone name.

That’s all it took for thieves to hijack two truckloads carrying $1 million value of Man Fieri and Sammy Hagar’s tequila.

In one of the crucial high-profile cargo heists in latest reminiscence, criminals posing as firm officers used cyber deception to reroute 24,000 bottles of the celeb duo’s Santo Spirits tequila to a faux Los Angeles warehouse — as an alternative of its supposed vacation spot in Pennsylvania.

After duping respectable drivers in Laredo, Texas, they spoofed the vehicles’ GPS, making the booze that took practically 4 years to supply disappear and not using a hint.

“Oh, it damage. It damage dangerous,” TV chef Fieri instructed “60 Minutes” this week as he revealed particulars of the plunder.

“I imply, it is a semi-tractor truck,” mentioned Fieri. “My thoughts is swimming in precisely how do you lose, you understand, that many hundreds of bottles of tequila.”

The heist underscores a a lot bigger and extra alarming fact: Cargo theft has metastasized into an organized, world enterprise that now prices the US trucking business $7 billion per 12 months.

That’s $19 million each single day.

Thieves should still smash locks in the midst of the night time, however now they’re additionally utilizing ever-evolving digital deception to hijack items — even impersonating the web sites of respectable trucking firms to idiot unsuspecting shippers.

Due to the distant nature of cyber ways, cargo theft is a high-profit, low-risk proposition.

With fragmented jurisdictions and minimal penalties to prosecute and implement cargo theft, thieves can steal hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in minutes with little worry of arrest.

And as Fieri and Hagar’s expertise reveals, nobody is immune.

That’s why we want Congress to cross the bipartisan Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, which might give legislation enforcement and business a unified framework to struggle again.

The legislation would create a long-overdue activity power to pursue these felony rings, and would additionally set up a badly wanted nationwide cargo-theft database to trace this exploding disaster.

At present cargo theft information is self-reported, so the extent of the injury is probably going underestimated.

Nonetheless, the stats we do know are alarming.

Strategic theft — deception, fraud, and cybertheft that methods shippers, brokers and carriers into handing masses over to thieves as an alternative of respectable receivers — skyrocketed 1,500% from 2022 to 2024.

Cargo-theft losses surged 27% in 2024 and are projected to climb one other 22% in 2025, with logistics-service suppliers seeing practically $2 million in cargo stolen from them on common yearly.

And the true price goes far past the stolen items themselves.

These thefts are disrupting deliveries, elevating insurance coverage charges, eroding belief within the provide chain — and in the end, imposing larger costs on shoppers.

It’s encouraging to see this concern acquire nationwide consideration, even when it took celeb victims to spark it.

However the higher victims are the small enterprise homeowners, truck drivers and carriers who quietly take in devastating losses that hardly ever make headlines.

Fieri and Hagar’s stolen tequila is not any anomaly, however a warning of how brazen these felony networks have change into.

They aim something that strikes shortly and sells simply, from electronics and meals to clothes and family items — they usually’re getting extra refined yearly.

It’s proof of an emboldened, worldwide felony community exploiting America’s open roads and digital vulnerabilities.

However on daily basis Congress delays, the networks develop stronger, the expertise sharper and the financial toll larger.

“If it could occur to us with what I consider have been fairly sturdy measures and safety and consciousness and, you understand, communication . . . then all people’s weak,” Fieri mentioned.

Let’s cross the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act to offer legislation enforcement the authority, coordination and information they should dismantle these rings earlier than the following multimillion-dollar load disappears.

Truckers present up for America each single day. It’s time for Congress to indicate up for them.

Chris Spear is president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations.