THIEVES POSE AS TRUCKERS TO STEAL HUGE CARGO LOADS

Associated Press (10/21/13) Hegeman, Roxana

Thieves have begun posing as truckers to steal large shipments of cargo by using the Internet to access online databases where they can assume the identities of legitimate freight haulers and identify the commodities they want to target. Thieves can assume an identity of a trucking company by spending as little as $300 to reactivate a dormant Department of Transportation carrier number on a government Web site. These thefts are still little-known and only rarely discussed outside of the commercial trucking industry, but information on the thefts has been coming out in crime reports and Associated Press interviews. The most commonly stolen items are food and beverages, which are easy to sell on the black market and hard to trace. Stolen loads are also difficult to recover, as companies often do not know there is a problem until the shipment fails to reach its destination, generally four or five days after the fake pick-up, by which point the goods have likely been sold. The thefts not only harm the trucking industry and commerce, but also increase consumer prices, and could place the health and safety of consumers at risk if the stolen products are allowed to spoil or are tampered with before they are returned to the market. Freight brokers have been encouraged to take extra precautions, such as getting drivers' thumbprints, and to look for clues that could indicate a suspicious driver, such as temporary placards or identification numbers, the lack of a GPS, and sudden changes in the time of the pickup.