Where’s the Beef? Beef Bandit Caught with GPS Tracking
25 Apr 2013Beef thief caught red-handed using a GPS tracking device in the palettes.
Food distribution companies are beginning to utilize GPS technology, and it is helping them recover lost product. Beef is one of the most expensive foods to purchase, therefore making it a target for thieves. Recently in Orange County, Florida, a group of thieves chose the wrong truck to rob.
Instead of stealing the beef from the truck, the men stole the entire refrigerated truck and ran off with it. With them, they took several thousands of dollars worth of beef. The truck was loaded with the beef in order to be delivered the next day, so the thieves knew it would be a perfect opportunity to take off with it. They stole the truck and left the meat in an unrefrigerated warehouse with the intention to sell it later at the black market.
Stealing beef happens more often than you might think, according to Brad Bateman of North South Foods. Each truck holds thousands of dollars of meat. As a meat broker with North South Foods, he told reporters stealing beef is a large business for these types of thieves, due to the large profit they can get. Another truck was stolen in Osceola County, that had around $250,000 worth of beef inside. Unfortunately, the truck was found empty in Seminole County several days later. Had they been using GPS trackers, it might have avoided the significant loss.
While these refrigerated trucks are often stolen in the middle of the night, after the trucks are loaded, some drivers get robbed as well. Willy Peralta, who is a manager at Sanford Supermarket, claims several delivery drivers have been robbed at gunpoint in order to access the meat in their trucks.
“Some of them have been stuck up for their truck and some of them, people just get in their trucks and drive off,” Peralta told reporters at Channel 9.
Bateman from North South Foods said the GPS trackers are located in most refrigerated trucks nowadays. They are usually hidden in the palettes, and sometimes packaging of the products. Because they are often in the truck or palettes themselves, the truck may be found empty by the time the police track it down. This time, however, police were lucky to find the meat still in the truck.
As investigators pulled up to the Ontario warehouse, four thieves were seen unloading meat with a forklift, and were ready to sell it on the black market. This often includes small discount stores and neighborhood residents. It is not only illegal, but may contain bacteria from being in unrefrigerated warehouses before being sold. The refrigerated truck was already ditched and they were unloading meat from a U-Haul. Luckily, this GPS device was located in the product’s packaging, so the thieves were found.
Embed Code
Comments are closed.