Nearly $4 Million in Stolen Cargo Recovered in LAPD Theft Bust
Detectives recovered $3.9 million in stolen cargo in Los Angeles, leading to the arrest of two men associated with a South American crime ring.
Oscar David Borrero-Manchola, 41, and Yonaiker Rafael Martinez-Ramos, 25, were taken into custody last week after various search warrants at storage unit facilities in the San Fernando Valley, according to police.
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Detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department's Cargo Theft Unit (CTU), in collaboration with members of the Los Angeles Port Police, Union Pacific Police Department and Los Angeles World Airport Police, arrested the men involved in the theft.
CTU detectives recovered over $1.2 million in stolen tequila, speakers, coffee, clothing, shoes, body wash and pet food in the bust. Additionally, the officials recovered a stolen shipment of bitcoin mining computers, valued at $2.7 million, from Los Angeles International Airport as the shipment was about to be loaded onto a plane headed to Hong Kong.
Additional arrests may follow, the LAPD said in a statement.
The cargo theft incident follows other recent thefts in the Los Angeles area.
R & R Transport Services has been hit three times in two weeks this month, the Bloomington, Calif.-based trucking company told Los Angeles Fox TV affiliate KTTV, with thieves stealing trailers from their lot. The company's part-owners have been able to track down all the stolen trailers, with one case ending in an arrest.
In February, law enforcement recovered $600,000 of stolen container chassis at the Port of Los Angeles, arresting one man in connection with numerous instances of theft. That investigation remains ongoing.
And in the 12 months prior to that month, more than $2 million in Nike sneakers had been stolen across 10 train burglaries on BNSF Railway lines across California and Arizona.
Cargo theft continues to roil the trucking and rail industries, with California being the top targeted state for cargo thieves, according to data from cargo theft prevention and recovery network Verisk CargoNet. Los Angeles County and neighboring San Bernardino County saw incidents soar 50 percent and 47 percent in 2024, respectively.
But thefts like this are bound to go beyond the supply chain, and could end up costing the consumer. Cargo theft has gotten so pervasive across the country that one retailer isn't ruling out a price hike to make up for the lost goods.
After enduring a 'dramatic increase' in cargo theft incidents over the past two years, Academy Sports + Outdoors chief supply chain officer Robert Howell expects the problem to further add to supply chain-related costs.
'Our costs are getting higher,' Howell told a Senate subcommittee hearing on cargo theft on Feb. 27, calling the problem 'relatively new.'
'I can't tell you exactly how much is going directly to pricing, but if this continues at the rate it's going, absolutely, those costs will have to be borne in future price increases,' Howell said.
Cargo theft numbers vary from one company to another depending on the data, but all signs point to an increasing problem.
According to supply chain risk prevention tech provider Overhaul, U.S. cargo theft is expected to rise to 2,705 confirmed incidents, up 22 percent from 2,217 events last year. Note, the confirmed totals far outpace the likely number for major theft events, which the company said surpassed 13,500 in 2024.
On the rail, the Association of American Railroads said the incidence of these thefts surged by approximately 40 percent to reach 65,000 cases nationwide. Howell told the committee that Academy Sports + Outdoors has seen a similar increases.
Howell shed light on another concern, saying that over the past year, the retailer has not recovered any stolen cargo.
'To the best of our knowledge, nobody's ever been apprehended or caught in any of the incidents we've been involved with,' Howell said.
Howell cited that the increase over the last 18-to-24 months has come in four forms: load interception; identity theft; double brokering—when carriers or brokers subcontract loads illegally or inadvertently to fraudulent carriers who then intercept the goods; and cyber fraud. Academy most often experiences cargo theft in the form of identity theft or fraud.
'We had a shipment of private-label swimwear intercepted in transit in Nevada. The entire load was stolen, forcing us to reallocate swimsuits already in the Academy network to the intended destination of the shipment, our southern stores,' Howell said. 'It was shopping season for swimwear—this product was in demand and we knew if we didn't immediately reallocate merchandise we would lose those sales, and potentially, those customers, in the long-term. Apart from the cost of lost merchandise, this also resulted in additional transportation costs, shipment delays and possible customer impact.'
At the February hearing, Howell, along with executives from BNSF, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) and trucking and transportation company Tanager Logistics urged lawmakers to step up enforcement and create a supply chain fraud and theft task force.
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