May 14, 2008 7:37 am US/Mountain
Fla. Cops: Highway Hijackers Robbing America Blind
$30 Million in stolen cargo recovered in Miami-Dade county in 2007
MIAMI (CBS) ―
It's become the new Miami vice: cocaine cowboys turned to highway hijackers, and it is now the costliest crime in America.
This crime means more in losses in America than every robbery, larceny, grand theft and burglary combined, but few people have ever heard about it.
CBS station WFOR-TV in Miami uncovered what some cops call America's next big homeland security crisis. WFOR-TV reported that while these thieves steal us blind, they're also funding terrorism with some of the stolen loot.
Marion County Sheriff Ed Dean told WFOR "There is a war going on. The war is being waged against America by the bad guys."
WFOR reported that Florida's turnpike and interstates have become the front lines in that war-the war to prevent cargo theft.
It's a crime that's been gaining popularity among the underworld since the 1990's.
"It's a homeland security issue, said Captain Tommy Bibb of the Central Florida Cargo Theft Task force. "It's an economic issue," Capt. Bibb said.
But only now is cargo theft seen as a serious crime and getting national attention from law enforcement.
WFOR-TV spent several days and nights riding along with cargo theft task forces set up in Central and South Florida. The task forces were set up in an attempt to reduce this growing crime.
"If he didn't know that would give us suspicion that maybe he just took this trailer," Capt. Bibb said while pointing to a suspicious tractor-trailer that the team had just pulled over.
"We'll check and see if those trailers are loaded," Capt. Bibb said.
In the last year, $30 million worth of stolen merchandise was recovered in Miami-Dade County alone.
And investigators believe that two or even three times that amount is being stolen and not getting caught. It's getting through despite law enforcement's best efforts to stop the crime.
"Most people don't even know what cargo theft is," Captain Bibb said while cruising up I-75 looking for stolen tractor-trailers.
The crime and criminals are so prevalent it has happened right before surveillance cameras as undercover officers watched.
The undercover video shows cargo theft suspects hooking up their own rigs to the trailers that sit unguarded in parking lots all over the country. The thieves then simply drive off taking the tractor-trailers loaded with merchandise right off the street.
"It probably takes only a minute and a half to back up to a semi-trailer take it and you're gone," Captain Bibb said, while looking at just such an abandoned trailer at a truck stop.
"Mostly it's these trailers that are left unattended with no locking devices on it just gives the cargo thieves a big opportunity," Bibb said.
WFOR-TV obtained pictures that show how easy it is to steal big money when thieves take these trailers.
Miami-Dade cops caught up with some thieves 2 weeks ago because the thieves got a hand truck stuck under the cargo - forcing it to stick out of the back of the truck. If that hadn't happened, the cargo thieves would have successfully stolen the truck's load of microchips, worth more than $17 million.
"It (cargo crime) is huge. Not only are some of these loads worth millions of dollars, they are split up and they're sold off very quickly," FDLE's Scott Friedman said.
More surveillance video obtained by WFOR-TV shows cargo thieves operating in broad daylight.
"They come in with a stolen load and blend right in," Captain Tommy Bibb said, describing how easy it is to steal a tractor-trailer.
"They pull it inside the warehouse off-load it and then they take the trailer out someplace and dump it," Capt. Bibb said.
WFOR-TV reported these crimes are the result of organized gangs. These gangs have relocated to South Florida from Cuba or elsewhere in South America. The vast majority of the organized cargo theft operations are based in South Florida. But the thieves are helping themselves to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cargo up and down the eastern seaboard of the United States.
"Very easy pickings," Capt. Bibb said describing the trailers left unattended at truck stops from New Jersey to Atlanta, Dallas to Nashville and everywhere in between.
Almost all of the stolen cargo is taken either directly from warehouses or driven away in tractor-trailers where the cargo is already loaded and meant for a retail store or distributor.
"They're just very easy to steal," said Mark Peavy of the Marion County Sheriff's Office. Peavy shook his head at the ease of theft even while he walked around just such a potential target-an unattended trailer left at a truck stop. Peavy was trying to find a contact phone number on it to call to have the trailer towed to a secure location.
Inside these trailers, the thieves steal everything from food, to jewelry, cosmetics to clothing, high-end electronics to computer microchips.
They even steal prescription drugs. In fact, that has become the new "craze" among cargo thieves purposely finding and stealing tractor-trailers filled with prescription drugs.
"It's big business big industry," Miami-Dade's TOMCATS Lt. Twan Uptgrow said. TOMCATS is the cargo theft task force located in South Florida. "You can have a load of pharmaceuticals, a $30 million load of pharmaceuticals in one truck. You're talking about high profit low risk (for those who would steal it.)"
Marion County Sheriff Ed Dean put the problem succinctly. "These are organized thugs that are stealing America blind," Sheriff Dean said.
"It's more of a hassle to go in and buy a soda then it is to steal this truck," Capt. Bibb said while standing behind yet another unattended tractor-trailer his task force discovered sitting in a truck stop.
"You have somebody who can steal a million dollar load and they know that in two days they'll probably get time served and case closed and they'll be back doing the same thing again," Lt. Uptgrow said.
Though there are no hard numbers because until this year cargo theft wasn't even tracked by the law enforcement statistics, the FBI estimates that cargo theft costs America between $10 and $30 billion a year. Break that down and you get just about $100 stolen every year for every man, woman and child in the United States.
"It could be more. It could be a lot more," said the FBI's Kenneth Kaiser.
Kaiser is Assistant Director of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division in Washington, D.C. and he sat down to talk with the I-Team's Stephen Stock about this problem.
"I don't think the general public knows how many tractor-trailers are stolen how much money is going out the back door it affects everybody," Kaiser said.
"Most of it heads down into Southeast Florida, Hialeah and Miami," Capt. Bibb said.
Investigators have tracked millions of dollars in stolen merchandise that has been stolen elsewhere, driven to South Florida then it was shipped from Miami to Venezuela, Costa Rica, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Paraguay.
"People don't realize the threat we have to our American economy through this cargo theft," Marion County Sheriff Ed Dean said. "And it will continue and it will get worse and it will get more violent."
"We have documented sources where people who are buying the stolen merchandise have ties to terrorist countries and terrorist nations," Lt. Twan Uptgrow of Miami-Dade TOMCATS told WFOR-TV.
And the cops fighting this crime say they need federal help.
They're pressing local congressional leaders to hold hearings on Capitol Hill and to get federal money to fight what they say has become a major Homeland Security issue.
After WFOR-TV contacted several Congressmen and women from South Florida, staff members from Representatives Kendrick Meek and Mario Diaz-Balart met with the TOMCATS and Marion County Cargo specialists. They discussed potentially getting federal funding as well as holding Congressional hearings in an effort to stop this growing crime.
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