A food fraud case study
In the past, I’ve told you that food-waste-diversion crimes are being detected at unprecedented levels in Europe, and described how enforcement actions coordinated by Europol had dismantled 13 organised crime groups in their most recent anti-food-fraud operation.
This week’s case study explores diversion-style crime from a North American perspective. This case doesn’t involve the diversion of waste back into the supply chain, but, like those discovered in Europe, it does involve an organised crime group.
When: November 2024
What: 24,000 bottles of Santo Tequila worth more than $1 million.
How: Criminals used non-existent trucking companies and a process called ‘double-brokering’ to gain access to the goods, ensuring they were never delivered to their intended destination.
Details:
In November 2024, a shipment of premium Santo Tequila left Mexico on its way to a warehouse in Pennsylvania, via Texas. The shipment comprised the entire batch of a special lot of tequila that had taken 3 years to make, especially for the 2024 holiday season.
After crossing the border into Texas, the consignment was moved to two semi trucks and entrusted to a logistics company hired by Santo Spirits to deliver the tequila to its warehouse in Pennsylvania, a 2.5-day drive north.
The logistics company hired a trucking company to make the delivery. It outsourced the job to two other trucking companies through a bidding process called double brokering. Drivers hired by the second companies collected the trailers and drove away with the tequila.
In Pennsylvania, the tequila did not arrive as scheduled, and Santo was told there had been a mechanical problem with a truck. A few days later, the shipment still hadn’t arrived. Santo was told the mechanical problem had been worse than first believed, but the delivery would arrive soon, around 5 days later than scheduled.
GPS tracking provided by the logistics company showed the truck was definitely en route. A few days later, Santo was told the truck’s GPS showed it was near the warehouse in Pennsylvania.
But the truck – and the tequila – never arrived.
Investigators discovered the trucking companies had told the drivers to take the trucks to Los Angeles. The trucking companies were fake businesses, with fake online profiles, phoney letterheads, email addresses and phone numbers, and possibly operated by people outside the USA.
The emails about the mechanical issues were falsehoods, and the GPS tracking had been faked.
The drivers, however, were genuine, hired by the fake trucking companies.
The bigger picture:
This type of cargo theft, involving redirection of goods to other locations by remote operators, has increased by more than 1,200% in four years, according to a cargo theft investigator who assisted with the Santo Tequila case.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)’s special cargo theft unit says that in such cases, the goods are usually sold online or in stores. A recent ‘bust’ found $4.5 million worth of stolen goods in a warehouse.
The outcome:
Santo Spirits was luckier than most. The LAPD cargo theft unit tracked down one of the drivers, who told them he had been directed to drop the cargo in the San Fernando Valley. One truckload – eleven thousand bottles – of the missing batch were found at a warehouse in southeast Los Angeles two weeks after the heist. The other truckload was never found.
Source:
Alfonsi, S. and Chasan, A. (2025). Two truckloads of Guy Fieri’s tequila vanished last year. It shed light on a growing new crime. [online] CBSnews.com. Available at: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/double-brokering-guy-fieri-tequila-heist-60-minutes/.
🍏 Want more case studies? Check out the Food Safety Knowledge Vault on The Rotten Apple🍏
This article was originally published at The Rotten Apple – a weekly newsletter for food professionals