
Shipments of almonds, walnuts, and pistachios are being stolen in California - JumpCrisscross
https://www.outsideonline.com/2186526/nut-job
======
owenversteeg
Nuts are very expensive by weight. Take shelled walnuts... those can be quite
expensive. If I remember right an 18-wheeler carries about 50 metric tons of
goods, so at $15/kilo for shelled walnuts that's $750,000 sitting on a truck
that seems to be protected by a little $100 GPS tracker that can be easily
disarmed.

$750,000 is a lot of money for a truck full of nuts. Even if you just skim
13%, that's a hundred thousand dollars. If you're selling consumer
electronics, you attract attention. If the police see your car full of
iPhones, or if they open a basement and find thousands of iPhones, that's
suspicious. But if they see a basement full of walnuts? They'd just close the
door and move on. Nobody suspects walnuts to be stolen unless you're actively
looking for them. It's not as if the walnut farm can blacklist the walnuts'
IMEI or something either. Just go around to a bunch of small, independent
grocers and ask if they want to buy $2000 of walnuts for half the usual price.

Or, even more brilliantly, start an online walnut selling business. Grocers
might turn you in for your obviously stolen nuts, but some random Internet
walnut buyer? I'm someone who eats a lot of nuts and I have no idea how I'd
even check if my nuts were stolen. What am I gonna do, call them? "Hello, do
you sell stolen walnuts?" "Nope" "Ok thanks!"

~~~
rsynnott
> But if they see a basement full of walnuts? They'd just close the door and
> move on

I mean, I think that'd at least lead to a casual question or two.

~~~
ptero
Likely dodge-able. One can, for example, play a nut "the world food supply
chain is breaking up, GMOs are everywhere, etc. This makes me keep a few
years' worth of calories in all natural foods close by."

~~~
owenversteeg
Which leads me to my second favorite thing about nuts: calorie density! That
shipment of nuts would have 327 million calories. Assuming you're 30, will
live to 100, and eat 2,200 calories per day, you'll only consume 56 million
calories in the rest of your life.

That shipment of nuts could be passed down in your survivalist family. First,
it would be all the food you ate for the rest of your life. Then, your first
child would be born and would start eating the nuts, continuously, until they
died at 100 years old. They would have a child - your grandchild, and your
grandchild would eat only nuts until THEY turned 100 and died (having a kid
along the way.) Your grandchild's first kid would be born (your great-
grandchild), start eating nuts the day they were born, have a kid, and die at
100. This final kid, your great-great-grandchild, would eat only nuts for
their entire life, slowly whittling down the stockpile that lasted five
generations. Eventually your great-great-grandchild would die in this
basement, at the age of exactly one hundred years old like their ancestors,
surrounded by the remnants of the one single truck of walnuts that their
great-great-grandfather stole hundreds of years ago.

Nuts are insanely calorie dense. If you disaster-plan with a more conservative
80 year lifespan, are 30, and eat 2200 calories per day, you'll only consume
about 6 metric tons of walnuts for the rest of your life. If you put that in
peanut butter, which is (like walnuts) very calorie dense, you'd fit enough
calories for the rest of your life into 5.5 cubic meters, roughly the size of
a small bathroom.

(Not that the police officer would be likely to know the calorie density of
walnuts, of course. Also, I love the pun.)

~~~
caliagent
Nuts go rancid. Bad idea for a survivalist story.
[http://ucanr.edu/datastoreFiles/234-2753.pdf](http://ucanr.edu/datastoreFiles/234-2753.pdf)

~~~
Mathnerd314
The almonds there last 10 months, long enough to grow and harvest some
fruits/vegetables in a suitable climate.

Typical emergency preparedness guidelines suggest stocking food for maybe a
week. What kind of scenarios are you preparing for?

~~~
caliagent
I was following the parents fictional account that mentioned subsequent
generations eating this shelles walnut stockpile.

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ams6110
_...the Crain theft, along with similar heists in 2011 and 2012, ... were
committed by people who ­appeared to understand the trucking business,
identity theft, and computer secur­ity._

Pretty much the textbook example of an organized crime operation.

~~~
saosebastiao
Meh, not necessarily. I used to be a truck driver (paid my way through
college), and I know computer security well enough to execute some basic
hacks, and I've read quite a bit about identity theft due to suspicion of an
attempt made against me. I wouldn't say the right set of skills in a single
person is common, but it certainly isn't so uncommon that it doesn't exist.

The bigger clue that it is origanized is that they've stolen 370,000 lbs of
it. That is a huge amount of warehousing and movement...no way it could be
done by one person. I'd be willing to bet they're working with a mid-size
walnut farmer or distributor who can "launder" the stolen goods fairly easily
into something that can be wholesaled without being obviously tracked.

The curious thing for me is that the trucks haven't been recovered. If I were
doing this, I'd drop the trucks off at the side of a country road in the
middle of nowhere. You can't really scam your way through a quick cash sale of
a stolen tractor like you can with a Honda Accord, and driving it off to
Mexico to be chopped adds a lot of risk to what seems like a relatively low
risk operation.

~~~
maxerickson
What are the odds they just drive a truck full of nuts to Mexico?

According to
[https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop12015/ch2.htm](https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop12015/ch2.htm)
there is random inspection on the US side for theft and then random customs in
Mexico. Prior to the US starting theft inspections, an insider on the Mexico
side would make it work pretty well.

Another possibility is faking the identification and paperwork when picking up
a shipment. Disappearing a fake truck is probably easier than disappearing a
real one.

~~~
saosebastiao
> What are the odds they just drive a truck full of nuts to Mexico?

Not very likely, but certainly possible. I don't see the advantage though
(could exist, but I just can't think of it). I've never seen US theft
enforcement and Mexico doesn't have border _controls_ like the US, but they do
have traffic stop inspections and lead-based enforcement. Any box trailer can
get stopped at any time and asked for customs documents and manifests. If you
stay just within the Central Valley, you'll likely never get stopped, unless
you're visibly overweight. And I'm not sure the market is there in
Mexico...you'd probably end up re-exporting to the US where the documentation
from the origin would have the same problem (how do we make it look like we
grew this instead of stole it?).

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rdtsc
I know someone who grows and processes walnuts. They own everything, the land,
picked and cultivated the trees, bought equipment, hired workers, some on
temporary (seasonal basis) some permanent. Apparently shelled and sorted high
quality walnuts are pretty expensive and a good profit maker. Especially in
the EU market. Or at least they were more expensive than I'd expect.

When they said how much a truck full of packaged shelled walnuts is worth, I
also surprised they are not sending guards with those trucks.

~~~
bayesian_horse
Yes, a truck load of nuts is worth millions.

And it may be easy to steal. But it also takes a whole truck to run away with
the loot.

~~~
jagermo
And you need someone to unload it to (pun a little intended). I'm not sure how
big the shelled nuts market is, they might know each other .

Interesting insight, though.

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mnm1
"Boudreaux said nut theft had outstripped drug crime as his top priority and
promised an aggressive investigation."

Looking on the bright side, at least the police actually have something useful
to do for a change. Great article, BTW.

~~~
Mathnerd314
They have plenty to do pretty much all the time. But priority usually goes to
the flashy cases (that would make the department look good/bad) or revenue
collection (writing tickets etc.). [http://www.copblock.org/1250/police-and-
priorities/](http://www.copblock.org/1250/police-and-priorities/)

------
millzlane
>Several counties even ban the sale of nuts before harvest is complete, to
discourage black-market sales.

Wouldn't that create a black-market for people who want the nuts before
harvest?

~~~
RugnirViking
Yeah this confused me as well. If they didn't ban it, then it wouldn't be
illegal, and thus not a black market but just a 'market'

~~~
Finnucane
I think the idea is that it means that anyone selling before the harvest is
doing so illegally, and the nuts are maybe stolen, because they couldn't be on
the market legitimately. So if you were caught selling, you'd be subject to
arrest. If there were no ban, it would be easier to fence stolen nuts.

~~~
Declanomous
I think it also prevents crimes of opportunity, since you'd have to hold on to
the nuts until you could legally sell them.

So if you went to somebodies farm in the middle of the night and loaded up a
semi, you'd have to stash that semi somewhere for a month rather that selling
it the next day.

For a more urban example I live in a city and there are scrappers who driver
around in pickup trucks all over. It is commonly known that some will steal
things made out of metal from your yard unless it's bolted down. They also
steal copper wire from building sites, etc.

Now generally by the time someone notices that the scrap is missing the person
has already turned in their scrap for money. And if the police figure out who
did it and where they took it, the evidence has already been shredded and
mixed with similar metals.

If you had to hold on to scrap for a month before you could sell it, you'd be
way more likely to catch people red handed.

------
DuskStar
A relatively homogenous, high-value good with minimal security controls? I'm
honestly surprised that theft wasn't a problem long before this.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Probably the average criminal just didn't think of nuts as being particularly
valuable (even though they clearly are).

Wasn't there a case in Canada a few years back where someone stole a huge
amount of maple syrup? That stuff is pretty pricey, too.

Edit: yep, $18 million worth. They were caught, eventually.

[https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/01/27/men-
convicted...](https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/01/27/men-convicted-in-
quebec-maple-syrup-theft-should-face-stiff-penalties-crown-says.html)

~~~
devoply
Hard to off load 18 million of maple syrup.

~~~
SilasX
Right, the natural barrier to a lot of these crimes is the difficulty of
unloading that much product on the black market without attracting attention.

~~~
dogma1138
Organized crime won't have much problem, you mix it with other goods of the
same type and offload them over a period of time.

~~~
stevenkovar
Nuts go rancid.

~~~
dogma1138
1+ years refrigerated, 2+ frozen.

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B1FF_PSUVM
> he discovered that one person of interest in the case had cosigned a loan to
> a Los Angeles County official worth $5 million.

Neat. Default on loan payments, cosigner picks up the tab.

Are the IRS on to this sort of stuff?

------
mr_overalls
Wisconsin has also had issue with cheese thefts in recent years:

[http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/thieves-46-000-worth-c...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/thieves-46-000-worth-
cheese-wisconsin-heist-article-1.2695976)

[http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wisconsin-thieves-
swipe-...](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wisconsin-thieves-
swipe-160-000-worth-cheese-n503526)

------
joejerryronnie
Once autonomous trucking becomes ubiquitous, how often will these vehicles get
hacked to just deliver their shipments to the criminal's warehouse directly?
"Disrupting" organized crime by cutting out the middleman!

~~~
adbachman
Redirecting the truck seems unlikely, but dropping a couple traffic cones in
front of one in the middle of nowhere and calmly unloading it with no driver
to hassle you will be a lot easier.

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JokerDan
This was a surprisingly amazing lunchtime read. Very interesting and nut
theft? Never thought something like that would fall into organised crime, this
was a real eye opener!

------
matteuan
This reminds me of some bandits in my region that used to aim Saffron
shipments and storages. Saffron usually costs more than 30/gram in a shop.

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kevin_thibedeau
With $0.5MM shipments going out wouldn't it be wise to bury some satellite
trackers in the containers?

~~~
MichaelBurge
> When I visited Horizon, Squire told me that one processor, concerned about
> publicity, tried hiding GPS trackers in its shipments instead of calling the
> police. The company still lost two loads to thieves.

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dzonga
brain food so why not!!

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acomjean
Interesting story.

Great web page design, I was able to read without a box popping up asking me
to subscribe (which was available on the bottom of the page). No video ads.

~~~
specialp
Outside magazine has a lot of very high quality long form articles. I ended up
subscribing to them since they do not nag, and produce a great product. I want
to support sites like theirs.

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bayesian_horse
Maybe this is an explanation for how the 45th president lost his nuts.

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brian-armstrong
> In California, millions of dollars' worth of almonds, walnuts, and
> pistachios are disappearing.

That's a lot of nuts!

~~~
seanp2k2
This whole story is nuts

