NBC News: Thieves have stolen more than $100 million in equipment from trucks bound for data centers since June

Loads headed for data centers have become a target for organized crews, according to a report by Lisa Cavazuti of the NBC News Investigative Unit published October 26. The report draws on industry leaders, consultants and investigators advising law enforcement. They told NBC News that since June, thieves have made away with more than $100 million in data center freight. Targeted equipment includes servers, fiber-optic cables, computer memory chips, copper wire and bitcoin mining machines. Per Futurism, NBC identified about two dozen such thefts across the US since last year.

Investigators described a multistep method. Thieves first hack freight brokers’ accounts on load-posting sites and list fake shipments to attract real bids. They send a malicious link to trucking companies that respond, take over those accounts once someone clicks, and use them to bid on real shipments. Sometimes an unwitting legitimate driver collects the cargo. Other times, AI-generated fake driver’s licenses are used to get accomplices hired. In one of the largest thefts, tracking coordinates were spoofed to defeat digital monitoring. Sgt. David Pantoja of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told NBC News “that’s how most of it is being done.”

In early June, a trailer carrying about $13 million in server equipment toward Fayetteville, Georgia, disappeared. Per Futurism, the unmarked police car escorting it was rammed, and the trailer was found empty days later. A $10 million server rack bound for Texas vanished in a similar way. In the two largest thefts NBC News found, none of the equipment was recovered. “The accident was not an accident,” said private cargo theft investigator Gerardo Pachuca. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office estimated two stolen loads found in Illinois held $300,000 in copper wire and about $1 million in data center power equipment. Keith Lewis of Verisk CargoNet said some single-shipment thefts have topped $30 million.