‘The Worst I’ve Ever Seen’: Cargo Thefts Have Turned Violent in Pursuit of AI Hardware

During the 25 years Gerardo Pachuca has spent investigating thieves who steal cargo from semitrucks, he says he’s never seen behavior this brazen. The consultant and former Los Angeles sheriff’s detective claims that two times in recent months, robbers stole pricey hardware destined for AI data centers using a confrontational new tactic. It’s left the freight industry on edge. The incidents involved two different shipments of high-value technology traveling from Silicon Valley to Southern California, according to Pachuca, who says he learned about the thefts from law enforcement authorities. Each truck was tailed by private security professionals driving unmarked escort vehicles, which were supposed to ensure the goods made it to their destinations safely. But hours into one journey, another driver rear-ended the escort in a hit-and-run, forcing it to stop. In the other case, the escort stopped after another car nudged it into a tailspin, a ploy commonly known as a PIT maneuver, and then fled. Everyone familiar with the “accidents” believes the escorts were deliberately immobilized, according to Pachuca. Once the semitrucks lost their escorts, the drivers proceeded without halting—but not to their planned destinations. They were never heard from again, Pachua says, and millions of dollars in data center gear remains unaccounted for. WIRED attempted to independently confirm Pachuca's accounts with five state and local law enforcement agencies, but could not because he shared limited information to avoid jeopardizing what he describes as ongoing investigations. But two other people in the cargo industry provided corroborating information. J.J. Coughlin, chairman of the Southwest Transportation Security Council, a nonprofit intelligence-sharing group, says one of the affected escort companies notified him as soon as its vehicle was attacked while it was guarding “high-value technology.” Danny Ramon, director of intelligence and response at the freight-monitoring software developer Overhaul, says he learned about the rear-ending incident from law enforcement sources days after it happened. He describes the situation as a “coordinated assault” affecting a shipment of “AI hardware.” Pachuca, Coughlin, and Ramon all say that no one was hurt in the attacks—they assume the truck drivers were in on the scheme, an increasingly common issue—and the perpetrators have yet to be caught. They are all concerned that the isolated cases could turn into an alarming trend—a violent spin on freight crime, now enabled by cyber-based scams and hacks, and targeting the very equipment powering the bleeding edge of the internet. “It’s the worst I’ve seen,” Pachuca says of cargo theft nationwide. “The methods they are using, the value they are getting, the frequency these crimes are occurring.” Escort companies are a final line of defense and are increasingly in demand. Michael Duffy, CEO of Solutions Group International, says his escort business used to be busy primarily ahead of the holiday shopping season, but it has now picked up year-round, with companies moving liquid cooling parts, servers, and computer chips emerging as his biggest clients. “Now that the values have shot through the roof, we’re getting called all the time,” Duffy says. He estimates his company has protected 13,000 shipments over the past four years, without a single loss. High-value cargo and their escort vehicles have been targeted in Mexico and other countries for years. The suspected attacks in the US are now prompting escort operators to find ways to beef up their security, and some are encouraging personnel to call 911 at the first sign of suspicion. “We’ve been trying to come up with a game plan,” says Rachel Fruchtenicht of Shadow Freight Security. | Got a Tip? | |---| | Do you work in the freight or tech industry and want to talk about what's happening? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporters securely on Signal at peard33.24 and aarianm.30 | AI Heists Cargo theft has been on the rise since the start of the Covid pandemic, when more consumers turned to ecommerce and delivery for their daily needs. More recently, the booming AI data center industry has created a new target for would-be thieves: Total spending on their construction in just the first half of this year surpassed the total for all of 2025. While the overall number of thefts reported last quarter fell 26 percent year over year, the value of the goods taken more than doubled as criminals are increasingly targeting expensive cargo, according to new data released this month by Verisk CargoNet, an analytics and risk assessment firm. Some of the most commonly stolen goods include metals—especially copper—and enterprise-grade computer and networking equipment, according to Verisk CargoNet. These shipments are typically transported according to standard procedures, creating “a significant mismatch between their financial value and their ordinary transportation and security profile,” Verisk CargoNet said in an announcement accompanying the new data. In April, for example, thieves allegedly made off with 34,560 optical transceiver cables and 96 network switch modules—parts used in data centers—that were supposed to be traveling from Olive Branch, Mississippi, to Richardson, Texas, according to a notice issued by private investigators to freight industry partners seen by WIRED. In some cases, law enforcement has succeeded in recovering the lost goods. In May, authorities in Southern California announced the seizure of $4 million worth of allegedly stolen cargo, including data center cooling equipment developed by the company Deepcool AI. One person was arrested in connection with the case. Deepcool AI did not respond to a request for comment. In June, California Highway Patrol received a tip from a prospective buyer who believed a deal was “too good to be true,” sergeant Omar Morales tells WIRED. He said CHP went on to recover more than $2.2 million in merchandise allegedly stolen in three separate incidents, including eight pallets of “server switches” manufactured by Celestica for Meta valued at $550,000 in total. Meta declined to comment. Celestica did not respond to requests for comment. Morales says the investigation is ongoing. The same day as the Meta recovery, authorities in the Chicago area discovered a reportedly stolen trailer filled with about $1 million in equipment bound for data centers. Hacking, Now Ramming For the most part, today’s cargo heists are relatively simple—they don’t involve snipping locks, breaking down truck doors, or PIT maneuvers. Instead, thieves take advantage of the fragmented and sometimes impersonal nature of the freight industry, in which hundreds of thousands of independent truck owner-operators can sign up to transport shipments posted online. Criminals sometimes hack into a truck operator's email address using social engineering or phishing, allowing them to essentially take over their business and sign up to transport loads using its legitimate motor vehicle registrations. GPS trackers on stolen trucks can be spoofed or deactivated, leaving no trace. In another version of the scam, freight industry experts say, legitimate business owners illegally sell off their motor carrier numbers—the unique identifiers assigned to trucking companies by federal regulators—allowing fraudsters to operate as a real business with a long-standing permit, phone number, and email address. Both of the recent thefts that targeted escort vehicles involved recently sold motor carrier numbers, Pachuca says. Morales says the Meta data center switches seized in California were stolen using a similar technique. To acquire their loot, the thieves posed as a real trucking company, including falsifying the legitimate motor carrier’s documents. “These are very sophisticated, very organized criminal organizations,” says Ben Wilkens, director of cybersecurity at the National Motor Freight Traffic Association, a trade organization. A new federal system, called MOTUS, is designed to crack down on some of these impersonations and scams by making it easier for trucking companies to manage their federal registrations, and for customers to confirm their legitimacy. Regulators released a bulletin in March reminding the industry that registration numbers could only be sold as part of corporate transactions, and that those sales must be reported. Georgia-based shipper FLS Transportation Services detects a scammer trying to steal one of its loads every day, says Jaclyn Giles, the company’s director of operational support. Employee training and a paid monitoring service have helped FLS fend off most shady carriers. But every month or so, “our employees get sloppy,” Giles says, and a thief makes off with cargo. Most recently, Giles says FLS lost $650,000 worth of tools. Last year, she adds, the company had to change insurers over concerns about insufficient coverage for stolen loads. Some carriers don’t report thefts partly because of fears that their insurance costs will skyrocket, according to Wilkens. Others are buying supplemental insurance or splitting loads across many trailers to reduce potential losses. Giles says FLS now attaches GPS trackers directly to high-value shipments such as LEGO toys. Pachuca says one of his California freight clients, which moves a lot of tech gear, adopted Flock license-plate cameras and discovered would-be thieves casing their location to identify trailers with the highest-value products. He says another client has begun catching fake drivers’ licenses by scanning them. In June, WIRED reported that Tesla had enhanced driver identity checks after trailers with millions of dollars in batteries were taken right from its loading docks. Authorities haven’t publicly disclosed much information about where stolen AI hardware may end up. US export controls on chips and other high-value tech have created incentives to steal and smuggle the goods to countries like China. Based on location pings when some parts are activated, some freight industry experts, including Pachuca, suspect that many stolen shipments are taken overseas. Preventing these crimes has been complicated by a decades-long history of deregulation and patchwork enforcement. “Reporting structures and standards vary from one state to another, and the prosecution rates are low enough that this is a very high-reward, low-risk crime,” says the freight trade body’s Wilkens. “It’s easy money.” Comments Back to top