If you watched 60 Minutes on Sunday, you saw thieves use frighteningly advanced cyber tactics to steal two truckloads carrying $1 million worth of Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar’s tequila without ever pulling a gun.
More than 24,000 bottles of the celebrity duo’s Santo Spirits tequila—nearly four years in the making—never reached their Pennsylvania destination. After leaving Laredo, Texas, two legitimate drivers were duped by thieves posing as company officials into rerouting the load to a fake Los Angeles warehouse. After their convincing impersonation, the criminals also spoofed the trucks’ GPS, ensuring the seven-figure shipment disappeared without a trace.
While it made for gripping television, it highlights a much larger, more alarming issue. Cargo theft has metastasized into an organized, global enterprise that now costs the U.S. trucking industry $7 billion per year. That’s $19 million every single day.
Criminals still smash locks in the middle of the night, but now, as shown in the tequila heist, they also use ever-evolving digital deception to hijack goods, even impersonating the websites of legitimate trucking companies to fool unsuspecting shippers.
Because of the remote nature of cyber tactics, cargo theft is a high-profit, low-risk proposition. With fragmented jurisdictions and minimal penalties to prosecute and enforce cargo theft, thieves can steal millions of dollars in minutes with little fear of arrest. And as Fieri and Hagar’s experience shows, no one is immune.
That’s why we need Congress to pass the bipartisan Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (CORCA), which would provide law enforcement and industry with a unified framework to fight back. Not only would it create a long-overdue task force to pursue these criminal rings, but it would also establish a badly needed national cargo theft database.
Current cargo theft data is self-reported, likely underestimating the true damage. Still, the stats we do know are alarming. Strategic theft—deception, fraud, and cybertheft to trick shippers, brokers, and carriers into handing loads over to thieves instead of legitimate receivers—has skyrocketed 1,500% since 2021.
Cargo theft losses surged 27% in 2024 and are projected to climb another 22% in 2025, with logistics service providers now seeing nearly $2 million in cargo stolen from them on average annually. That’s an eye-popping number, but the true cost goes far beyond the stolen goods. It disrupts deliveries, raises insurance rates, and erodes trust in the supply chain. And ultimately, consumers see higher prices.
It’s encouraging to now see the issue gain national attention, even if it took celebrity victims to spark it. But the real, everyday victims are small business owners, truck drivers, and carriers who quietly absorb devastating losses that rarely make headlines.
It’s easy to dismiss the stolen tequila as an anomaly, but it’s a warning of how brazen these criminal networks have become. They target anything that moves quickly and sells easily, from electronics and food to clothing and household goods. And they’re getting more sophisticated every year.
It’s proof of an emboldened, international criminal network exploiting America’s open roads and digital vulnerabilities. Every day Congress delays, the networks grow stronger, the technology sharper, and the economic toll higher. Our drivers, carriers, and warehouse workers deserve to operate in a system where rules are enforced and criminals are held accountable.
Congress has the tools to act. Pass the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act to give law enforcement the authority, coordination, and data they need to dismantle these rings before the next multimillion-dollar load disappears.
Truckers show up for America every single day. It’s time for Congress to show up for them.
If your company needs support in the development of a shipping and logistics program or can benefit from a review of your current freight spend, route and lanes structure to optimize your spend, you should call CPC Consultants for a free assessment.