Celebrity chef Guy Fieri has recently opened up about how he was the victim of a huge crime, and he believes if it can happen to him and his company, “everybody’s vulnerable.”
Fieri and former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar worked together to start their own tequila brand, Santo Tequila. They were heavily promoting the product and anticipating seeing it on store shelves when the unthinkable happened. Two semi truckloads of the tequila disappeared.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Fieri shared his reaction when he found out the tequila was missing. First of all, you have to wonder how it’s possible to lose semi trucks. He said, “It’s not a needle in a haystack.” He added, ” My mind is swimming in how do you lose that may thousands of bottles of tequila.”
In all, there were 24,000 bottles of tequila split between two semi trucks that traveled from Guadalajara, Mexico, and crossed the border into the US in Laredo, Texas. This is where everything went wrong.
Santo Tequila does not have its own semi trucks, so they outsourced to a logistics company who outsourced to a trucking company. Then that trucking company outsourced the job to two more trucking companies, only these weren’t legitimate trucking companies.
While the trucks were supposed to be en route to a warehouse in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, the truck drivers, who had no idea they were hired by criminals, were instructed to take the trucks to Los Angeles.
This isn’t the only huge shipment to be intercepted by criminals in California. In fact, more goods are stolen from trains, trucks and by cybercriminals in California than in any other state. This is mainly due to the highway system and the ports, like the Port of Los Angeles.
There’s even a special police division in Los Angeles that works to recover these types of stolen goods, and they have a whole warehouse of high end items they have recovered, everything from designer clothes to washing machines and computers.
Back to the tequila, one of the two semi trucks was found after police tracked down one of the drivers. He told the police that he was instructed to deliver to the truck to an industrial area of the San Fernando Valley. Police later found the stolen tequila in Southeast Los Angeles, but that was only one of the two truckloads of tequila. While 11,000 bottles were recovered, the other truck was never found.
Watch the video below to learn more about this crazy tequila heist.