Police Operation to Combat Cosmetics Thefts Recovers €4m Perfume Shipment

June’s biggest loss ended in a successful recovery of €4 million shipment of perfume, thanks to a police operation to combat thefts from cosmetics companies in the Crema area of Lombardy, Italy.

Carabinieri officers were alerted to the crime when the truck driver contacted police just before 10.00hrs to report his locked vehicle had been stolen when he stopped at a service station on the SP4 highway. Multiple police response units were quickly activated, and the truck was successfully intercepted on a roundabout after police vehicles blocked its route. Two suspects were arrested at the scene.

During their investigation, officers also seized wire cutters, a utility knife, a switchblade, and electronic keys used to open and start trucks, a local media report stated. The cargo owners and logistics managers opened the vehicle’s security seal to verify the stolen load and confirmed all 25,000 pieces of a well-known perfume brand destined for the U.S. were accounted for.

This was one of 10 cargo crimes in June targeting goods with a value of €1 million or more, producing an average loss of €1,978,700. Incidents included:

€2,000,000 – a theft of jewellery from a Retail Store in Madrid, Spain, on 27 June, which led to the arrests of five suspects.
€1,787,000 – thieves used deception to steal 350,000 packets of cigarettes from a Maritime Transportation Facility in Romania.
€1,500,000 – a Theft of Trailer crime and loss of a shipment of cosmetics from an Aviation Transportation Facility at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, France, on 13 June.
€1,000,000 – a loss of jewellery/precious metals from an Authorised 3^rd Party Facility in Portugal on 6 June.

The 30 days of June 2025 saw a total of 21 major cargo thefts reported to the TAPA EMEA Intelligence System (TIS), classified as crimes with a loss value of €100,000 or more. These produced an average loss per incident of €1,085,333.

Major incidents over the course of the month included:

€600,000 – pharmaceuticals stolen from an Origin Facility in Calabria, Italy, on 25 June.
€500,000 – high-end bicycles stolen from a Retail Store in France on 7 June.
€500,000 – phones, tablets, smartwatches and headphones stolen on 21 June from a Destination Facility in France.
€350,000 – clothing and footwear products taken from a vehicle at an Origin Facility in Le-Blanc-Mesnil, France, on 24 June.
€130,000 – almond nuts stolen in a Deceptive Pick-up crime in Weurt in the Netherlands on 13 June.
€125,000 – auto parts reported stolen from a supply chain in Germany on 6 June.
€100,000 – bicycles were taken from a Retail Store in Udine in Italy’s Friuli-Venezia Giulia region on 6 June.

Seven more thefts were reported with losses of between €50K-€100K, such as:

€60,000 – tools/building materials taken from an Origin Facility in Sevilla, Spain.
€60,000 – laptops allegedly stolen by employees at an Origin Facility in Turin, Italy.

Cargo thefts reported to TAPA EMEA in June included a high number of crimes which resulted in arrests by law enforcement agencies. This included four arrests in connection with thefts of phones from a parcel point at a Services 3^rdParty Facility in Krimpen aan den Ijssel in South Holland.

Another suspect was arrested in Schiedam, also South Holland, as part of a police investigation into the theft of a shipping container with a cargo of 719 electric scooters. Some of these were reportedly later seen on sale on an online platform in the Rotterdam area.

Overall, a total of 634 new cargo thefts were reported to the Association’s incident database in June, with more crimes still likely to be added. The 109 or 17.1% of these including a loss value produced an overall total loss for the month of €24,005,277 or an average of €220,231.

The daily average loss for recorded cargo crimes notified to TIS was €800,175 in June.

Cargo crimes were reported in 36 countries across TAPA’s Europe, Middle East & Africa region. Germany and Italy retained the top two places for incidents with 196 crimes and 102 incidents respectively, accounting for 47% of the monthly total. Nine other countries in EMEA suffered double-digit incident rates:

France – 56 cargo thefts, 8.8% of the June total
Spain – 54 or 8.5%
United Kingdom – 51 or 8%
South Africa – 38 or 5.9%
Netherlands – 25 or 3.9%
Greece – 20 or 3.1%
Romania – 11 or 1.7%
Poland – 10 or 1.5%
Belgium – 10 or 1.5%

Theft from Vehicle with 177 crimes (27.9% of the monthly total) and Theft from Facility with 166 incidents (26.1%) were the two most common types of incidents reported over the month, which also saw a high number of cargo crimes with the M.O. of Violent & Threat with Violence – 80 in total.

Losses were reported across 20 TIS product categories, with 11 recording double-digit cargo thefts: