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Think buffet.
Forty thousand oysters, $400,000 worth of lobster and a cache of crabmeat were all stolen in separate incidents within weeks of each other in New England.
The first seafood disappeared on Nov. 22 in Falmouth, Maine, where authorities suspect someone stole 14 cages full of oysters from an aquaculture site in Casco Bay. Many of the oysters are mature and ready for sale, and with the cages are worth as much as $20,000, according to the Maine Marine Patrol.
“It’s a devastating situation for a small business owner,” said Marine Patrol Sgt. Matthew Sinclair.
The other two robberies happened in Taunton, Massachusetts, about 160 miles (255 kilometers) away. First, a load of crab went missing after leaving a Lineage Logistics warehouse on Dec. 2. Then, on Dec. 12, lobster meat for Costco stores in Illinois and Minnesota was stolen by a fraudulent trucking company, according to the broker who arranged the pickup.
“The carrier we hired was pretending to be a real carrier,” Dylan Rexing, CEO of Rexing Companies, said Tuesday. “They had a spoofed email address. They changed the name on the side of the truck. The one who did it was forged a certified driver’s license. This is a sophisticated crime.”
Lineage Logistics, Costco and Taunton Police did not respond to requests for comment, but Rexing said police told him about the crab theft from the same warehouse.
This type of cargo theft has been a problem for more than a decade, he said, but it has gotten worse in recent years.
“It happens every day, several times a day,” he said.
Cargo theft generally falls into two categories, said Chris Burroughs, president and CEO of the Transportation Intermediaries Association, a trade organization for the freight forwarding industry. A lobster heist fits the first type, involving someone posing as a legitimate trucking company. The second type, known as strategic theft, often involves using phishing emails to gain access to computer systems and get paid without actually stealing the product.
“This is a huge growing problem that needs to be addressed,” he said.
Because of its short shelf life, the stolen lobster likely ended up in restaurants, the two said. And while he’s seen plenty of jokes about stealing butter to go with lobster, Rexing said the thefts ultimately hurt consumers.
“You can eat seafood or not, they steal other things, they steal things to make your cars, they steal things that go into computers,” he said. “Ultimately, that cost will be passed on to the consumer.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
