READY, SET, CARGO!
AS the Christmas shopping season hits full stride, families aren’t the only shoppers looking for a bargain — crooks have their sticky little fingers working overtime as well.
On Nov. 29, in a town near Tacoma, Wash., a cargo container packed with 6,000 Laser X toys, among the hottest gadgets on store shelves this year, was stolen from the parking lot of a warehouse — in broad daylight.
The thief or thieves apparently walked into the lot of Regal Logistics, which operates 2.4 million square feet of warehouse space across the country, backed the front end of a tractor-trailer up to the Triton container as it sat on a trailer and simply drove off.
Local cops think the heist of the $39.99 toys — with a total value of roughly $240,000 — mayhave been an inside job.
The toys were due to be shipped to retailers on the West Coast later that day.
It is not known whether any store that was expecting a Laser X shipment is running low on inventory. It was the last container Big Apple-based NSI International, which makes the game, was bringing in before Christmas.
Neither the truck nor the goods had been recovered as of Thursday, and NSI and police believe the popular toys will end up on eBay or other retail sites.
Folks at Regal Logistics said it was the first time in their 50year history that someone stole a tractor-trailer from its yard.
The Tacoma-area theft comes as cargo heists across the country tick up slightly this year after several years of declines.
The FBI estimates that US businesses lose $30 billion a year to cargo theft.
Insiders attribute the uptick in cargo heists in 2017 to Mother Nature — given the high number of severe hurricanes and storms as well as wild fires.
“This year we’ve had floods, hurricanes and fires, which has made building supplies the most popular stolen items,” Scott Cornell, transportation business lead and crime and theft specialist at Travelers, told The Post. “Cargo thieves are good at stealing what is in high demand and what they know they can sell.”
And sure enough, the most-stolen products in the third quarter were building and in------
dustrial materials, representing 19 percent of all goods stolen, according to Sensi Guard, a supply chain research firm.
AT toy maker NS I Inter national’s Midtown Manhattan offices, owner Frank Landi is not happy about the heist.
“This was the only trailer that was stolen, and it does seem like someone would have to know what was inside,” Landi said.
Laser X, introduced for the Christmas shopping season last year, uses advanced sensors worn by players and “laser guns” able to shoot accurately up to 200 feet, according to its marketing material.
“The toys were headed to one of our largest customers who had ordered a last-minute fill-in because the product was selling out,” Landi noted.
Because it happened so late in the season — and because of the time it takes to get the gadgets produced in Asia and shipped to the US — there isn’t time to get more Laser X’s onto store shelves this season, he said.
Landi declined to identify the retailers that were going to get the shipment of Laser X’s that were stolen.
The Triton cargo container containing the toys landed at the Port of Tacoma on Nov. 28 and arrived at Regal Logistics’s warehouse too late that day to be off-loaded and stored inside — so it sat in the parking lot amid other trailers and cargo containers.
Sometime the next afternoon, it vanished from the lot.
Landi said the goods represent a three-day supply — meaning some locations could be running low.
Authorities are still investigating the matter, while NSI monitors Websites, including Amazon and eBay, to look for new Laser X listings.
ON Nov. 27, halfway across the country, thieves made off with 350 Samsung flat-screen televisions worth up to $180,000 that were sitting in a tractor-trailer outside of a warehouse in Bolingbrook, Ill, according to Steve Covey, a special agent at National Insurance Crime Bureau, which is involved in the investigation.
“These bad guys proceeded to unload the TVs into a rental truck spending some time at the freight yard,” Covey told The Post. “Typically fraudsters would take the trailer itself, so this probably means they did some homework and found that there were no secu-- rity cameras at that location.”
“This is the peak season when the manufacturers move things around and the thieves know that,” said John Albrecht of Transport Security. “It’s hard to get accurate numbers about this crime because a lot of companies don’t want to report it. They don’t want their competitors to know” that they just lost a big shipment.
Over Thanksgiving weekend, thieves struck in Newark, NJ, at a secured warehouse yard on Elizabeth Avenue, lifting some 28 refrigerator-freezer units, according to Kurt Duester dick, vice president of loss prevention at National Retail Systems, a shipping company that wasn’t involved in the incident.
Sometimes cargo thefts can pose a threat to the general public beyond the finan- cial loss incurred.
At a UPS sorting facility near the Memphis airport, thieves stole a dozen guns from a shipment of 24 firearms bound for a sporting goods store in Shreveport, La., according to local reports.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is investigating, and agents believe the heist wasan inside job.
WHILE cargo theft typically peaks in the fourth quarter, industry experts say 2015 and 2016 were relatively calm with just a slight bump in the number of incidents at the end of the year.
Since 2007, food products and consumable merchandise have been the most stolen items from trucks and warehouses — because they can’t be traced — followed by home and garden merchandise and electronics, according to Sensi Guard Security Services, a logistics company.
Over the past couple of years, law enforcement cracked down on the growing number of crime rings targeting the lucrative nut industry in California, where almonds and pistachios had become desired commodities for thieves.
“Task forces across the country had strong arrest records, but now everyone is saying we are seeing the crime comeback,” Cornell said, adding that some of the bad actors in those earlier arrests may be out on bail or on probation.
“Whenever law enforcement has good results, it’s a matter of time before some new groups emerge and fill in the gap.”
Cargo thieves are good at stealing what is in high demand and what they know they can sell.
— Scott Cornell, Travelers insurance exec