$400K Worth of Lobsters Never Made It to Costco

The latest supply-chain headache comes with claws: A semi hauling an estimated $400,000 in live lobsters to Costco never made it to the freezer aisle. Authorities say the truck, loaded in Taunton, Massachusetts, and headed for warehouses in Illinois and Minnesota, vanished en route in what looks less like a one-off caper and more like another data point in a growing cargo-theft problem, per the Independent. The shipment was being moved by Indiana-based Rexing Companies, whose CEO, Dylan Rexing, tells Chicago's WFLD that the disappearance appears to be the work of an organized ring targeting high-value loads.

"This is a huge issue across the country," Rexing says, warning that such thefts hit businesses directly and eventually show up as higher prices for consumers. For Rexing's firm, the loss means shelving hiring plans and dialing back employee bonuses, he notes. The FBI is investigating, but no suspects or recovered crustaceans have been announced. Federal officials say this kind of theft—often occurring at ports, truck stops, and rail yards—can cost US companies between $15 billion and $35 billion a year, per the Independent.

The thieves who hit trucks and containers may not be the same people raiding retail shelves, but investigators say both streams of stolen goods can end up with the same middlemen who buy and resell them. Homeland Security Investigations earlier this year launched "Operation Boiling Point" to clamp down on cargo theft. The Department of Transportation is also sounding the alarm: in a September request for input, it called cargo theft a "growing concern" that drains the economy, snarls supply chains, and can help bankroll bigger criminal enterprises, from drug trafficking to human smuggling.