New England is known for lobster. But lately, it is known for the lobsters that went missing. Thieves allegedly stole a truckload of lobster valued at $400,000 from a Massachusetts facility earlier in December. The scheme was complex, according to Dylan Rexing, chief executive of Rexing Companies, the logistics firm that was coordinating the shipment.
The first part allegedly involved a phishing scam, and not of the seafood kind. According to Rexing, a culprit ever-so-slightly altered the email domain name of a real trucking company. The logistics firm hired what turned out to be a fraudulent entity, he said.[1]
Typosquatting is a form of cybercrime where attackers register domain names that are intentionally similar to legitimate domains, often differing by just a single letter or character. The goal is to trick users into visiting the fraudulent site by exploiting common typing errors or misspellings. Typosquatting is frequently used in phishing schemes to impersonate reputable businesses and steal sensitive information.
A perpetrator then arrived on 12 December to collect the lobster shipment at a Taunton, Mass., cold-storage center, run by a third party, where a Rexing customer was storing the lobster. Rexing said he believes the culprit impersonated a carrier by presenting a fake commercial driver’s license. The culprit’s tractor-trailer had the real trucking company’s name and trailer number on the side, he said.
After picking up the lobster meat, which Rexing said was destined for Costco warehouses in Minnesota and Illinois, the alleged thief or thieves turned off the truck’s GPS trackers. The crustaceans haven’t been located (even if found now, it would need to be thrown out because of food-safety regulations, Rexing says). “This is a very sophisticated crime,” Rexing said. “This is not a mom-and-pop shop.” The local police department, he added, told him there had been a stolen shipment of crab from the same cold-storage facility earlier in December.
Rexing, who suspects a large organization orchestrated the lobster theft, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the incident. A spokesperson for the FBI’s Boston field office said department policy prevents confirmation of the existence of an investigation. Costco and the Taunton Police Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Cargo theft such as this is a regular occurrence and growing concern nationwide. Experts say it affects companies of all sizes, though small businesses can be particularly vulnerable.
The food-and-beverage sector faces particular risk because of how easily products can be redistributed into the supply chain, said Chris Burroughs, chief executive of Transportation Intermediaries Association, a professional organization whose 1,800 members include Rexing Companies. “There’s no unique serial number on a load of lobster meat,” Burroughs said.
This incident is reminiscent of other high-profile food and beverage thefts, such as the recent case involving the theft of Guy Fieri’s tequila. In that situation, criminals managed to intercept a shipment of the celebrity chef’s branded tequila, highlighting how valuable and easily resold consumable goods have become prime targets for organized cargo theft.
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[1] https://wallstreetjournal-ny.newsmemory.com/?publink=453657db5_134fc82
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