Truckers are no strangers to the concept of double-brokering. A recent cargo theft is bringing attention to a persistent issue.
On Friday, Dec. 12, a shipment of lobsters valued at $400,000 was stolen from Lineage Logistics in Taunton, Mass. The load of crustaceans was destined for delivery to Costco stores in Illinois and Minnesota.
Dylan Rexing, CEO of Rexing Companies, said his company had hired a carrier that they believed to be legitimate to haul the load. As it turns out, the company was anything but legitimate.
According to Rexing, the thieves “impersonated a real carrier” by spoofing the carrier’s email address and changing the name on the side of the truck that picked up the load. The thieves went to great lengths to seem like a legit operation – even registering a domain name similar to the legitimate carrier’s, with a slight difference of an accent mark over the letter “I”.
“This is a major issue that our country is facing right now,” Rexing told FOX32. “It really adds to the inflation issues for the products and services that we’re buying around the country.”
While Rexing’s company is chalking it up as a loss – acknowledging that even if they were to recover the load, its perishable nature would make it now worthless – he said he hopes bringing attention to the issue will spur change.
“I’ve had a couple people asking me, ‘Why are you even talking about this?’ Like it’s kind of a black scar, if you will,” he said. “But the reality is, if no one’s raising their hand to talk about it, it’s not going to get any better.”
With cargo theft continuing to surge over the past five years, the wheels are in motion at the federal level to combat the problem.
Introduced in April, the Combatting Organized Retail Crime Act aims to reduce cargo crime by strengthening law enforcement’s legal tools to pursue and prosecute cargo thieves.
The proposed legislation would also mandate the creation of the Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center within Homeland Security Investigations and the Department of Homeland Security. Lawmakers contend this would assist in the collaboration between federal and local agencies investigating cargo crimes.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has also taken an interest in curbing cargo theft. This past September, the department published a request for information to ask stakeholders how best to protect the supply chain from cargo theft. In its request, the department asked for feedback on a number of factors, including significant theft risks and the best practices or technologies employed to reduce them.
The department’s request for information about cargo theft received 85 comments, including those from the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.
In its response, the Association pointed to double-brokering and theft of a carrier’s identity as two of the “most significant” cargo theft risks, especially for small-business truckers who often acquire loads from brokers on load boards.
“As shippers have become less likely to work directly with small carriers, reliance on load boards has increased dramatically over the years among owner-operators,” OOIDA said. “Unfortunately, these platforms have simultaneously become fertile ground for nefarious actors.”
Compounding the issue, according to the Association, is that “very little” is being done to address fraudulent brokers, which they say has “created an environment where fraudulent actors can thrive with little fear of being caught or punished for their crimes.”
Among the Association’s recommendations to the U.S. DOT was the need to establish a federal repository for reporting theft and fraud incidents. According to OOIDA, this could help improve communication among federal agencies, law enforcement jurisdictions, and industry stakeholders.
Currently, the only centralized system to report freight fraud is the National Consumer Complaint Database, which the Association called an “ineffective tool for motor carriers.”
OOIDA argues that the “lack of response historically” from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to reports has discouraged some truckers from using the database, which in turn “contributes to a lack of understanding of the scope of the problem within the agency.”
The group said it hopes that recent updates to the database will help to make it a “viable resource” to truckers. LL
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