What happened · The thefts and the counts

Supply-Chain Crime · Hardware · Logistics · United States · North America · Threat ReportCargoNet, FBI and police records · Dec 2024 to Sep 2026

• +18%confirmed cargo thefts in 2025, 2,243 → 2,646
• ~$725mestimated 2025 losses, up 60%
• −26%incidents in Q2 2026, year on year
• $304.6mQ2 2026 losses, from $135.7m

The incidents, by how well they are established police statements first, industry accounts last

What CargoNet counted in 2025 United States and Canada, annual analysis of 22 Jan 2026

Timeline · December 2024 to September 2026

In the order it happened the two escort attacks cannot be dated and sit where they were reported

1. Dec 2024About $7 million of Nvidia chips bound for Supermicro in San Jose are taken from a Burlingame warehouse — an allegation in a later federal indictment.
2. 3 Jun 2025Nearly $200,000 of Nvidia chips taken in Fremont, alleged in the same indictment.
3. 3 Jul 2025A Ceva Logistics trailer is taken from an unsecured Reno lot after hours; it is later found empty in Madera, California.
4. Nov 2025Six Southern California men are reported charged in federal court over a ring said to have taken as much as $22 million in five years.
5. 22 Jan 2026CargoNet’s 2025 analysis: confirmed thefts +18%, losses +60% to nearly $725 million; enterprise computing and cryptocurrency-mining hardware become “top tier targets”.
6. 18 Feb 2026Overhaul’s 2025 report, in its own database: 2,576 US thefts, electronics 22% of them.
7. 19 Mar 2026The FMCSA warns that carrier registration numbers may not be sold, leased or rented outside a legitimate corporate transaction.
8. April 2026Optical transceivers and switch modules for data centres allegedly taken between Mississippi and Texas — known only from a private investigators’ notice.
9. 24 Apr 2026CargoNet’s Q1 2026 analysis: 767 events, $131.58 million, and impersonation of real carriers described as a “systematic, scalable” method.
10. 30 Apr 2026The FBI issues a public service announcement on cyber-enabled cargo theft, active “since at least 2024”.
11. 1 May 2026Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives seize about $4 million of stolen cargo in Vernon, including data-centre cooling equipment.
12. 10 Jun 2026A trailer of data-centre infrastructure equipment worth about $1 million is reported stolen in Jacksonville, Florida.
13. 18 Jun 2026Cook County investigators find a stolen trailer of copper wire at a truck yard outside Chicago, and learn the same driver left the Jacksonville trailer there the week before.
14. June 2026The California Highway Patrol recovers more than $2.2 million of goods, including $550,000 of server switches made for Meta.
15. 6 Aug 2026CargoNet’s Q2 2026 analysis: incidents −26%, losses $304.6 million against $135.7 million a year earlier.
16. 12 Aug 2026WIRED reports two attacks on security escorts guarding data-centre hardware, from “recent months”; no police force has confirmed them.
17. 19 Aug 2026TAPA Asia Pacific’s Q2 2026 report: 125 incidents across 13 countries, led by fuel, tools and building materials, and food.
18. 24 Sep 2026Two Nvidia-branded PlusAI trailers, taken from outside its warehouse in Newark, California, are found abandoned half a mile away; they held sand.

The argument · Value, not volume

Thieves are choosing the load CargoNet’s reading of its own figures

What others add · How the loads are taken

The freight is stolen before the truck moves FBI alert I-043026-PSA, 30 Apr 2026

1. 1Compromise the accountA spoofed broker email carries a shortened link — a carrier agreement, or a poor service rating to “resolve”. It leads to a phishing site whose executable installs legitimate remote-management software, giving “total, undetected access”.
2. 2Post fake loadsFrom the compromised account they impersonate the broker on load boards, posting fake loads “sometimes in the tens of thousands”. Carriers that bid receive the same malicious agreement and are compromised in turn.
3. 3Bid on real loadsPosing as the compromised carrier, they accept real shipments and double-broker them with altered bills of lading and a new destination, changing the carrier’s contact and insurance details with the FMCSA so it can take loads it previously could not.
4. 4Take the cargoLoads are cross-docked or transloaded to complicit drivers and redirected. The actors sometimes then contact the broker to demand a ransom for the load’s location.

A name that can be bought the regulator, the data and one recovered load

Other counts, other pictures different databases do not add up, and are not meant to

Conclusion · What to hold firmly, and what loosely

Fewer heists, bigger hauls, and a gap in the counting as of September 2026

• Firm: in 2025 there were more confirmed cargo thefts in the US and Canada, each worth more — +18% in number, +35% in average value, +60% in losses.
• Firm: in 2026 incidents are falling while losses rise, and CargoNet warns that a few multimillion-dollar thefts drive the averages.
• Firm: data-centre equipment, server switches and copper have been stolen and recovered this year, by police who said so publicly.
• Loose: how much of the $725 million is AI or data-centre hardware. No published figure separates it; every total here is cargo theft in general.
• Loose: that this is a global pattern. The one Asia-Pacific report read here shows nothing like it.