Under Attack – How Cargo Thieves in the UK Escaped with €5m
On 29 March 2023, thieves strapped themselves to the undercarriage of a truck to gain access to a high security compound of a cash delivery company in Slough in the United Kingdom to complete the biggest single cargo theft reported to the TAPA EMEA Intelligence System (TIS) last month, escaping with €5,680,000.
According to media reports, the masked robbers then waited until 05:20hrs before commencing their attack, by which time the cash delivery vans on the site were ‘stuffed with money ahead of morning runs to banks and ATMs.’ Members of staff working at the Authorised 3rd Party Facility on Slough Trading Estate were threatened and bound with cable ties by the criminal gang. Fortunately, none of the staff suffered any injuries during the incident.
This was one of 565 new cargo thefts reported to the TIS database in March, a 13.6% rise in recorded incidents compared to February. Overall, the Association captured data and information on thefts from supply chains in 39 countries across the EMEA region.
Of these product losses, the 197 or 34.9% of incidents stating a value produced a cumulative loss of €16,155,929, up 80.9% month-on-month.
Incident data in March included 24 major freight crimes involving an individual loss value of €100,000 or more, up 84.6% on the previous Vigilant monthly report. The total loss for these highest value crimes of €13,328,523 produced an average value of €555,355. In most of these incident reports, the types of goods targeted were unknown, except for the theft of 66 pallets of coffee following a deceptive pick-up from an Authorised 3rd Party Facility in Bremen, Germany, on 29 March.
TIS also recorded major cargo crimes in Belgium, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, and Spain.
In addition to these 24 €100K+ crimes, a further 12 incidents reported to TIS registered product losses of between €50K-€100K, accounting for €794,205 of the monthly total or an average for these thefts of €66,183. Stolen products included tools/building materials and clothing & footwear.
TAPA EMEA was notified of cargo thefts in 17 TIS product categories in March in addition to the 68.3% of incidents in which the specific types of goods stolen were not identifiable. The continued high cost of fuel across the region meant diesel remained a popular target of cargo thieves, with 91 incidents reported in 10 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Fuel has been the biggest loss category in all of the first three months of 2023.
The top five countries for cargo thefts recorded by TIS in March to date were:
GERMANY
195 INCIDENTS
Germany continued to record the highest number of monthly cargo loss incidents in the TIS database. In total, the 195 thefts in March accounted for 34.5% of all losses reported to the Association in EMEA. The combined loss for the 49 crimes with a value was €2,455,821 or an average of €50,118. Six major losses were added to the Association’s intelligence database, including…
- €528,234 – Unspecified products worth €528,234 were stolen after intruders targeted a trailer parked in an unclassified parking location in the city of Kassel, Hesse, on 8 March.
For the second consecutive month, Germany saw the highest number of recorded fuel thefts; 52 incidents or 57.1% of all fuel losses reported to TIS in the EMEA region. Fuel thieves were active in 12 German states in March.
Five of the incidents in the €50K-€100K value bracket took place in Germany in March and these included the theft of a tractor unit worth €55,000 from an unclassified parking location in Neustrelitz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on 20 March.
UNITED KINGDOM
85 INCIDENTS
The 85 recorded cargo crimes in the United Kingdom in March represented a small fall over the February total but the total loss for the 35 incidents with a value still reached a total of €6,025,386 or an average of €177,217.
The previously referenced cash robbery in Slough, Berkshire, was the only major cargo theft sharing a value in March, while the UK also saw one incident of between €50K-€100K, the loss of 200 boxes of clothing and footwear worth €51,000 after thieves targeted a truck parked overnight at a motorway service area in Staffordshire. In this case, the driver discovered that the curtain of his vehicle had been cut open and a significant quantity of cargo stolen when he was checking his vehicle the following morning.
FRANCE
66 INCIDENTS
The number of recorded cargo thefts also declined month-on-month in France. The 66 crimes reported in March were 13% fewer than in February. Having recorded the highest number of major cargo crimes by value in the opening two months of the year, TIS received no incident reports in France with a value over €100K in March. Similarly, there was only one crime in the €50K-€100K value range, which Vigilant is unable to report.
Fuel thefts were also a prominent feature of freight crime intelligence in France, with 17 such thefts reported in 8 regions. Hauts-de-France was the region which saw the most cargo crimes in March, accounting for 24 or 36.3% of the national total, having also recorded the highest incident rate in February.
ITALY
61 INCIDENTS
Italy saw its rate of recorded cargo crimes increase 33.4% in March versus February, with a total of 61 incidents. The combined loss value of the 33 crimes sharing financial data was €1,524,118 or an average of €46,185 per incident for the month.
Three were major incidents producing a combined loss of €1,073,010 or an average of €357,670, and took place in Lazio, Lombardy and Marche, although no product information was received by TIS. In one of these incidents – the loss of €375,000 of cargo in the city of Macerata on 26 March – the intelligence report implicated the truck driver.
In one of the two crimes with a value of €50K-€100K, six offenders forced open the entry gate of an Origin Facility in Bisceglie, Apulia, on 26 March. The gang grabbed 11 copper coils, two compressors and five construction site drills, worth €50,000 but their escape was foiled by police officers, who responded quickly to the facility alarm and arrived in time to detain the suspects.
SPAIN
52 INCIDENTS
€3,530,917 worth of goods were stolen in 22 cargo thefts reporting a value in Spain and were among a total of 52 incidents recorded across the country in March. Six of these crimes were major losses, which included…
- €2,000,000 – on 6 March, thieves stole a shipment of high value but unspecified cargo from a trailer in the city of Zaragoza.
Rest of EMEA – 106 incidents
Outside of these top five countries, the remaining 106 incidents in March were reported in a further 34 countries in EMEA, including eight more major thefts of goods worth €100K or more. These eight incidents included the discovery of 6,000 stolen items of post in a warehouse in the city of Dendermonde, Belgium, worth a reported €200,000.
If you have cargo crime intelligence to share with TAPA EMEA, please send it to
tisteam@tapaemea.org
