Shipments of almonds, walnuts, and pistachios are being stolen in California

https://www.outsideonline.com/2186526/nut-job

by JumpCrisscross • 9 years ago

144 58 9 years ago

outsideonline.com

mnm1• 9 years ago

"Boudreaux said nut theft had outstripped drug crime as his top priority and promised an aggressive investigation."

Looking on the bright side, at least the police actually have something useful to do for a change. Great article, BTW.

Mathnerd3142• 9 years ago

They have plenty to do pretty much all the time. But priority usually goes to the flashy cases (that would make the department look good/bad) or revenue collection (writing tickets etc.). http://www.copblock.org/1250/police-and-priorities/

DuskStar• 9 years ago

A relatively homogenous, high-value good with minimal security controls? I'm honestly surprised that theft wasn't a problem long before this.

Turing_Machine• 9 years ago

Probably the average criminal just didn't think of nuts as being particularly valuable (even though they clearly are).

Wasn't there a case in Canada a few years back where someone stole a huge amount of maple syrup? That stuff is pretty pricey, too.

Edit: yep, $18 million worth. They were caught, eventually.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/01/27/men-convicted...

devoply• 9 years ago

Hard to off load 18 million of maple syrup.

pacificmint• 9 years ago

And a few years ago theft of the laundry detergent Tide became a big thing.[1][2]

You wouldn't think of that as a high theft risk commodity either.

[1] http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/ [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-are...

bayesian_horse4• 9 years ago

It's really hard to run away with a valuable quantity of nuts though.

acomjean• 9 years ago

Interesting story.

Great web page design, I was able to read without a box popping up asking me to subscribe (which was available on the bottom of the page). No video ads.

specialp• 9 years ago

Outside magazine has a lot of very high quality long form articles. I ended up subscribing to them since they do not nag, and produce a great product. I want to support sites like theirs.

torrent-of-ions• 9 years ago

Oh how the bar for "great web design" has fallen.

kevin_thibedeau• 9 years ago

With $0.5MM shipments going out wouldn't it be wise to bury some satellite trackers in the containers?

MichaelBurge• 9 years ago

When I visited Horizon, Squire told me that one processor, concerned about publicity, tried hiding GPS trackers in its shipments instead of calling the police. The company still lost two loads to thieves.

toomuchtodo• 9 years ago

GPS, cellular, and satellite M2M is trivially jammed (<$100$).

ams6110• 9 years ago

...the Crain theft, along with similar heists in 2011 and 2012, ... were committed by people who appeared to understand the trucking business, identity theft, and computer security.

Pretty much the textbook example of an organized crime operation.

amelius• 9 years ago

Or an overzealous chipmunk.

pvaldes• 9 years ago

... would explain the stripes. Is not its first robbery.

5040• 9 years ago

With help from an insider?

saosebastiao4• 9 years ago

Meh, not necessarily. I used to be a truck driver (paid my way through college), and I know computer security well enough to execute some basic hacks, and I've read quite a bit about identity theft due to suspicion of an attempt made against me. I wouldn't say the right set of skills in a single person is common, but it certainly isn't so uncommon that it doesn't exist.

The bigger clue that it is origanized is that they've stolen 370,000 lbs of it. That is a huge amount of warehousing and movement...no way it could be done by one person. I'd be willing to bet they're working with a mid-size walnut farmer or distributor who can "launder" the stolen goods fairly easily into something that can be wholesaled without being obviously tracked.

The curious thing for me is that the trucks haven't been recovered. If I were doing this, I'd drop the trucks off at the side of a country road in the middle of nowhere. You can't really scam your way through a quick cash sale of a stolen tractor like you can with a Honda Accord, and driving it off to Mexico to be chopped adds a lot of risk to what seems like a relatively low risk operation.

maxerickson• 9 years ago

What are the odds they just drive a truck full of nuts to Mexico?

According to https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop12015/ch2.htm there is random inspection on the US side for theft and then random customs in Mexico. Prior to the US starting theft inspections, an insider on the Mexico side would make it work pretty well.

Another possibility is faking the identification and paperwork when picking up a shipment. Disappearing a fake truck is probably easier than disappearing a real one.

dodgedcactii• 9 years ago

and because our criminal justice system is principally concerned with entrapping and prosecuting "TERRORISM!!111!!" cases, we don't get the manpower on these kinds of things, which persist across the states. So sad.

millzlane• 9 years ago

Several counties even ban the sale of nuts before harvest is complete, to discourage black-market sales.

Wouldn't that create a black-market for people who want the nuts before harvest?

RugnirViking• 9 years ago

Yeah this confused me as well. If they didn't ban it, then it wouldn't be illegal, and thus not a black market but just a 'market'

Finnucane2• 9 years ago

I think the idea is that it means that anyone selling before the harvest is doing so illegally, and the nuts are maybe stolen, because they couldn't be on the market legitimately. So if you were caught selling, you'd be subject to arrest. If there were no ban, it would be easier to fence stolen nuts.

rdtsc• 9 years ago

I know someone who grows and processes walnuts. They own everything, the land, picked and cultivated the trees, bought equipment, hired workers, some on temporary (seasonal basis) some permanent. Apparently shelled and sorted high quality walnuts are pretty expensive and a good profit maker. Especially in the EU market. Or at least they were more expensive than I'd expect.

When they said how much a truck full of packaged shelled walnuts is worth, I also surprised they are not sending guards with those trucks.

bayesian_horse4• 9 years ago

Yes, a truck load of nuts is worth millions.

And it may be easy to steal. But it also takes a whole truck to run away with the loot.

jagermo• 9 years ago

And you need someone to unload it to (pun a little intended). I'm not sure how big the shelled nuts market is, they might know each other .

Interesting insight, though.

dzonga• 9 years ago

brain food so why not!!

joejerryronnie• 9 years ago

Once autonomous trucking becomes ubiquitous, how often will these vehicles get hacked to just deliver their shipments to the criminal's warehouse directly? "Disrupting" organized crime by cutting out the middleman!

bayesian_horse4• 9 years ago

I actually don't expect this to be a big problem. You'd have to subvert multiple systems, on the truck and in the cloud, to make sure they don't get tracked right back to the criminals immediately.

Possible? Yes. Large-scale? Unlikely.

adbachman• 9 years ago

Redirecting the truck seems unlikely, but dropping a couple traffic cones in front of one in the middle of nowhere and calmly unloading it with no driver to hassle you will be a lot easier.

brian-armstrong• 9 years ago

In California, millions of dollars' worth of almonds, walnuts, and pistachios are disappearing.

That's a lot of nuts!

seanp2k2• 9 years ago

This whole story is nuts

B1FF_PSUVM• 9 years ago

he discovered that one person of interest in the case had cosigned a loan to a Los Angeles County official worth $5 million.

Neat. Default on loan payments, cosigner picks up the tab.

Are the IRS on to this sort of stuff?

bayesian_horse4• 9 years ago

Maybe this is an explanation for how the 45th president lost his nuts.

owenversteeg3• 9 years ago

Nuts are very expensive by weight. Take shelled walnuts... those can be quite expensive. If I remember right an 18-wheeler carries about 50 metric tons of goods, so at $15/kilo for shelled walnuts that's $750,000 sitting on a truck that seems to be protected by a little $100 GPS tracker that can be easily disarmed.

$750,000 is a lot of money for a truck full of nuts. Even if you just skim 13%, that's a hundred thousand dollars. If you're selling consumer electronics, you attract attention. If the police see your car full of iPhones, or if they open a basement and find thousands of iPhones, that's suspicious. But if they see a basement full of walnuts? They'd just close the door and move on. Nobody suspects walnuts to be stolen unless you're actively looking for them. It's not as if the walnut farm can blacklist the walnuts' IMEI or something either. Just go around to a bunch of small, independent grocers and ask if they want to buy $2000 of walnuts for half the usual price.

Or, even more brilliantly, start an online walnut selling business. Grocers might turn you in for your obviously stolen nuts, but some random Internet walnut buyer? I'm someone who eats a lot of nuts and I have no idea how I'd even check if my nuts were stolen. What am I gonna do, call them? "Hello, do you sell stolen walnuts?" "Nope" "Ok thanks!"

rsynnott• 9 years ago

But if they see a basement full of walnuts? They'd just close the door and move on

I mean, I think that'd at least lead to a casual question or two.

CPLX• 9 years ago

Just tell them you are transspecies and identify as a woodland squirrel.

ptero• 9 years ago

Likely dodge-able. One can, for example, play a nut "the world food supply chain is breaking up, GMOs are everywhere, etc. This makes me keep a few years' worth of calories in all natural foods close by."

John23832• 9 years ago

Reminds me of the illegal oil trade. Once you mix the good with the bad and put it on the market, who can tell the difference.

Better yet, other than the farmer that's stolen from, who would actually care?

saosebastiao4• 9 years ago

50 metric tons would be an exceptional trailer. 15 is much more likely. To get to 50 metric tons, you're typically looking at something like this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=cozad+drop+side+deck+trailer...:

owenversteeg3• 9 years ago

Huh, really? I would've bet on 50. Google tells me an 18-wheeler's max weight in the US is 80,000 lbs, or about 35 metric tons. That's substantially less than I'd expect to be honest. 35 metric tons isn't _that_ heavy, and I always thought of 18-wheelers as these massive behemoths of the road that carried villages worth of supplies.

Further reading shows that the US has uniquely low maximum weight limits, which results in containers that are legal under European laws arriving at US ports overweight. The UK for example has a maximum weight of 44 metric tons, and Canada (or at least some parts) have a maximum weight of 64 metric tons.

Do you know if trucks running at 44 (such as in the UK) use special trailers like those Cozad trailers?

Side note, while Googling truck things I found this gallery. http://www.cozadtrailers.com/en/gallery/ I highly encourage anyone reading this to take a look at it. I had no idea things that heavy could be moved on a truck trailer. One truck is moving an "Ocotillo Nacelle" at 350,000 pounds. Another is moving a SR-71 Blackbird.

matteuan• 9 years ago

This reminds me of some bandits in my region that used to aim Saffron shipments and storages. Saffron usually costs more than 30/gram in a shop.

JokerDan• 9 years ago

This was a surprisingly amazing lunchtime read. Very interesting and nut theft? Never thought something like that would fall into organised crime, this was a real eye opener!

mr_overalls• 9 years ago

Wisconsin has also had issue with cheese thefts in recent years:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/thieves-46-000-worth-c...

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wisconsin-thieves-swipe-...

Shipments of almonds, walnuts, and pistachios are being stolen in California

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