Was your cargo ship hijacked? Try this guy.

Boston Globe

30-06-2025

Hardberger runs a rare kind of repo service — extracting huge ships from foreign ports. His company is a last resort for shipowners whose vessels have been seized, often by bad actors. And over the years he's built a reputation for taking the kinds of jobs others turn down. Hardberger's specialty is infiltrating hostile territory and taking control of ships in whatever way he can — usually through subterfuge and stealth. Wherever in the world his missions take him, Hardberger thrives in its grey areas.
He handles the toughest of grab-and-dash jobs in foreign harbors, usually on behalf of banks, insurers, or shipowners. A last-resort solution to a common predicament, he is called when a vessel has been stolen, its operators have defaulted on their mortgage, or a ship has been fraudulently detained by local officials.
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The public perception of modern piracy usually involves Somalis in fast boats capturing tankers on the high seas. Of late, the Houthis launching from Yemen have revived global concern about attacks on merchant vessels and the global importance of maritime commerce, since more than 90 percent of all products reach consumers by way of ships.
But the more common though overlooked threat at sea is white-collar piracy: schemes where ships get held captive in port through bureaucratic or administrative means. The pirates are actually different groups of mortgage lenders, lawyers, shipowners, or shipping companies, and they might be sitting in an office a half a world away from the ship.
Max Hardberger, third from right, and Ian Urbina of the Outlaw Ocean Project, second from right, pose with the Haitian marine police after several days of patrols.
The Outlaw Ocean Project
And sometimes when the ships are caught up in this kind of piracy, a repo man gets the call. This type of offshore crime and the role of maritime repo men is the subject of the fourth episode of The Outlaw Ocean Podcast, Season 2, during which a reporting team trailed Hardberger on an especially tough mission in Greece. The podcast is available on all major streaming platforms. For transcripts, background reporting, and bonus content, visit
Port scams are as old as shipping itself and seasoned repo men can identify them by name. 'Unexpected complications': a shipyard makes repairs without permission, then sends the owner an astronomical bill, often for more than the value of the ship, hoping to force its forfeiture. 'Barratry': buying off crews, sometimes paying more than a year's wages to leave a ship's keys and walk away. 'A docking play': a shipowner defaults on his mortgage, but is in cahoots with a marina, which charges the repossessor hyperinflated docking fees.
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Consumers are affected by the theft and corruption because it adds millions of dollars to transport costs and insurance rates, raising sticker prices by more than 10 percent, maritime researchers say.
Tens of thousands of boats or ships are stolen around the world each year and are difficult to find because the ocean is vast, the search is often too expensive, and because ships frequently end up in ports with uncooperative or corrupt officials. But when the boat or ship is more valuable, 'repo men' like Hardberger are hired to find it.
Most recoveries of stolen boats and maritime repossessions involve doing paperwork and working with banks and local law enforcement. But when negotiations fail, waterborne jailbreaks sometimes occur.
The moment that catapulted Hardberger into the spotlight came in 2004, when his team was hired to find the Maya Express, whose mortgagee was looking to use the ship as collateral on a loan but couldn't find it.
They found the Maya Express in Miragoane, Haiti, a small port village, and learned that a judicial auction was set to take place in just two days, threatening to complicate the repossession. 'We had to do something in two days. We could not wait,' Hardberger told The Outlaw Ocean Project.
So, accompanied by two armed SWAT agents, Hardberger approached the men guarding the Maya Express and offered $300 to each of them to leave. With the guards out of the way, Hardberger and his team hitched the vessel to a tugboat and began the delicate task of cutting the anchor chains. 'Unfortunately it was a full moon and not a cloud in the sky. The entire bay was lit up so people came running down from the hills to see what was going on,' Hardberger recalled.
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Whenever onlookers came near the ship, the two armed men kept them on the dock and did not let anybody leave until the anchor chain was fully cut. Once the ship was free, the tugboat pulled the Maya Express into international waters and eventually toward the Bahamas. 'It was the worst possible condition for an extraction but we managed to get it out,' Hardberger said.
All of the repo men The Outlaw Ocean Project talked to said they abide by certain self-imposed rules. No violence — better, they said, to hire street youths for lookouts, bar owners for diversions, and prostitutes to flirt their way on board to spy. To talk his way on board, Mr. Hardberger said he has a collection of fake uniforms and official-sounding business cards, among them 'Port Inspector,' 'Marine Surveyor,' and 'Internal Auditor.' He also carries a glass vial of magnetic powder to sprinkle on the hull to reveal lettering that has been welded off.
Officials from the Haitian Coast Guard, Interpol, and the bar association in California, where Hardberger is licensed, said they had no records of complaints, disciplinary actions, or arrest warrants against him.
When we asked Hardberger how much longer he thinks he can keep doing this work, he replied, 'I don't know. As long as I can run to the end of the dock and jump in the water and swim to safety, I guess.'