10.5m Investigators Called Into Action After the Great Cheese Robbery
They called it ‘The Great Cheese Robbery’ – a cargo crime that captured the attention of news organisations around the world and which invited 10.5 million people to be on the lookout for ‘lorry loads of posh cheese.’
The crime in question was the fraudulent theft of 22 tonnes of cheese from leading British cheesemaker Neal’s Yard. The 950 ‘wheels’ of cheddar – described as some of the best in the world – had a reported value of some £300,000 (>€350,000) and had been ‘ordered’ by a fraudster posing as a wholesale distributor for a big French retailer.
The 10.5m ‘investigators’ were the Instagram followers of British celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, who went online to offer his shock at the theft and to rally support for the victim.
In the following 48 hours, news of the theft travelled the world as the likes of the BBC, SkyNews, NBC News, CNN, The Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, Euronews, Yahoo News, India TV News, the South China Morning Post, and the Sydney Morning Herald all took up the story.
The cheese, meanwhile, had likely been spirited away to Russia and the Middle East, reports stated.
The publicity clearly helped and within five days, police had arrested a 63-year-old man in south London on charges of ‘fraud by fake representation and handling stolen goods.’
For the victim in this case, the loss was doubly painful. Neal’s Yard honoured its payments to dairy suppliers so they would not have to bear the cost of the theft and in respect of their strong working partnerships. Not surprisingly, the company’s described their experience as ‘a significant financial blow.’
This one crime and the realisation of how a cargo theft can have such a dramatic impact on a business dealing with such a loss for the first time won’t be a surprise to TAPA EMEA members but it once again demonstrates the shockwaves that resonate with others outside of the supply chain security community who clearly find such criminal attacks almost unprecedented.
What would they then think it they were to explore TAPA EMEA’s TIS database and wade through its near 220,000 cargo theft incidents and over €2.4 billion of losses (based on less than 15% of crimes sharing a value) across 131 countries.
As has been said before, cargo crime doesn’t matter until it happens to you.
Ironically, for all its exposure, this particular case didn’t even make the top 10 of cargo crimes reported to the TAPA EMEA Intelligence System (TIS) database in October.
It was just one of 398 new cargo losses reported to TAPA EMEA so far for the 31 days of last month, which produced a total loss value of €23,488,550 for the 111 or 27.8% of incidents sharing their financial value.
These included 31 major thefts from supply chains in the Europe, Middle East & Africa region recorded in 13 countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. These include six seven-figure losses, averaging €2,716,300.
The 31 major losses – incidents with a value of €100K or more – produced an average loss of €704,142, and these included…
€8,697,800 – little in known about the biggest loss recorded in October, other than it took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, on 29 October.
€2,100,000 – a loss of miscellaneous products from a facility in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, in Germany stating an Internal M.O.
€1,500,000 – a forced stop and violent robbery targeting a shipment of phones and laptops on the A67 highway in the Netherlands on 7 October.
€450,000 – on 2 October, a trailer was stolen overnight from a secured parking location in Bad Honnef in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. No product details were recorded.
€400,000 – a Theft of Vehicle crime and the loss of clothing and footwear products on 19 October from a Services 3rdParty Facility in Frosinone, Lazio, in Italy.
€380,000 – a Theft from Facility incident of unspecified goods from a warehouse in London, United Kingdom, on 25 October.
€303,639 – a former employee was arrested after cash was stolen from an Origin Facility in Moscow on 16 October.
€227,000 – on 23 October, a truck was hijacked in Camperdown in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. Details of the goods stolen were not recorded.
€221,000 – another Theft of Vehicle crime, this time in Bentwisch in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, on 1 October.
€204,000 – another crime with an Internal M.O. involved the theft of products from a warehouse in Adana, Turkey, on 21 October.
€173,992 – on 2 October, miscellaneous goods were taken from a facility in Bucharest, Romania.
€131,637 – a worker was arrested after stealing furniture and household appliances from a retail facility in Moscow on 4 October.
Aside from these crimes, TIS recorded 12 cargo thefts with a value of between €50K-€100K, totalling €799,526 or an average of €66,627. These included:
- €89,780 – the theft of a container and 94 televisions from a Maritime Transport Facility in Helsingborg, Sweden, on 28 October.
- €70,000 – cash taken from a Services 3rd Party Facility in Orte, Lazio, Italy, on 17 October.
All these incidents contributed to a daily cargo loss of €757,695 in October, based on newly-recorded crimes sharing a value.
Germany recorded most cargo losses in the TIS database last month, with 142 crimes. Eight other countries in EMEA reported double-digit incident rates over the 31 days:
- Italy – 57 cargo thefts
- France – 46
- Spain – 24
- South Africa – 22
- United Kingdom – 17
- Ireland – 13
- Russia – 10
Thefts from supply chains were recorded in 21 TIS product categories, led by 110 thefts of Fuel in countries across the region.
Other categories with 10 or more losses in October were:
- Metal – 33 thefts, 8.2% of the monthly total
- Miscellaneous Products – 22, 5.5%
- Cash – 18, 4.5%
- No Load (Theft of truck and/or trailer) – 16 or 4%
- Clothing & Footwear – 13 or 3.2%
- Food & Drink – 12 or 3%
- Tools/Building Materials – 11 or 2.7%
- Tobacco – 10 or 2.5%
TIS data shows 116 or over 29% of crimes saw cargo thieves target trucks in unclassified parking locations. Other types of locations recording multiple incidents included:
- Origin Facility – 87 or 21.8%
- Authorised 3rd Party Facility – 40 or 10%
- En Route – 26 or 6.5%
Theft from Vehicle was the most recorded Type Incident in October with 110 incidents, 27.6% of the monthly total, followed by Theft from Facility with 104 or 26.1%.
TAPA EMEA members can search all the latest incident data and reports in the password-protected TIS database.
