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Six men have been indicted for allegedly stealing trucks full of expensive electronics from Meta and Microsoft, including a truck hauling $1.5 million-worth of Oculus headsets, according to court documents.
According to the indictment, the six men traveled from various locations across the United States to Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and other states “to steal products that were shipped in interstate commerce”. The co-conspirators allegedly surveilled distribution facilities “used by various national companies to distribute their products” and followed semi-tractor trailers leaving those distribution facilities. When those truck drivers stopped to rest or refuel, the co-conspirators would steal the entire semi-tractor and trailer, hook up the trailer to their own semi, and abandon the stolen tractor.
In many cases, the co-conspirators “would paint over any logos and/or identifying numbers on the stolen trailer, and use different license plates in an effort to conceal the identity of the trailer and evade law enforcement detection.” In many cases, they transported the stolen goods to Dade County, Florida, where they sold it to another buyer “for a fraction of the stolen load’s retail value.”
According to the indictment, one of the facilities the thieves monitored in Louisville, Kentucky was a distribution facility used by Meta. On May 6, 2022, two of the co-conspirators “located a semi-tractor trailer that left the Louisville, Kentucky facility laden with Oculus reality goggles valued at approximately $1.5 million.” The two stole the truck from a Pilot truck stop in Haubstadt, Indiana and drove it to Vanderburgh County, where they abandoned the tractor and trailer.
Meta wasn’t the only big tech company hit by the truck thieves. On August 31, 2022, they stole a truck “laden” with unspecified Microsoft products valued at approximately $940,000. On November 7, they stole two trucks: One hauling unspecified Sony products (the indictment didn’t approximate the value of these), and another hauling Harmon-JPL audio products valued at approximately $530,000.
The spree continued into 2023, when the thieves stole semi-tractors hauling Logitech products valued at $180,000, more JBL products, Meta electronics, and Bose audio speakers.
While it sounds like the defendants here were accumulating enough stolen goods to open their own Best Buy, their truck-stealing spree didn’t focus on tech products only. Over the course of 2023, they also stole trucks transporting CF Moto ATVs and Victoria’s secret and BGath and Body Works Products valued at $1 million.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
