Like a plot out of a heist movie.
Everyone knows – and loves – the great Guy Fieri. The celebrity chef and host of Guy’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (Triple D’s for the real ones out there) is an American icon. He’s also an entrepreneur, and founded a tequila brand called Santo Tequila with former Van Halen lead singer Sammy Hagar.
Things were going very smooth for Santo Tequila until November of last year, when two semi-truck loads of the liquor seemingly vanished out of thin air. It ended up being a very perplexing situation, and one that Guy Fieri did his best to explain on a recent episode and investigative piece that aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Basically, the tequila that was made down in western Mexico was shipped to Laredo, Texas, like any other batch of Santo Tequila. Once it cleared customs, the shipment of 24,000 bottles was supposed to find its way to Lansdale, Pennsylvania – where Santo’s tequila warehouse is located – on two different semi-trucks.
Dan Butkus, the CEO of Santo Spirits, originally thought that everything with the shipment was going according to plan. There was a small hiccup that was communicated by the outside trucking company they had hired, but other than that, the Santo Tequila was expected to make it to the warehouse, as Butkus explained:
“The product was due on Wednesday to our warehouse in Pennsylvania and on Thursday morning the logistics company told us there was a water pump cooler problem with the truck, it’s just gonna be a slight delay.”
That was the first signal that Santo Spirits was a victim of something called “cargo theft.”
The plan by those who stole two semi-trucks worth of tequila was very elaborate, yet rather simple. And it all started when the outside trucking company that Santo Spirits hired actually hired out the job to two different truck drivers. Those truckers accepted the load of liquor, and as crazy as it might sound, drove it where they were directed to by cybercriminals rather than the trucking company that actually hired them (in other words, the drivers weren’t in on it).
The cybercriminals then kept providing fabricated updates on the tequila shipment to Pennsylvania, and even faked the GPS location of the trucks. From what Santo Spirits could tell, it was still headed towards the northwest United States. In reality, the two trucks had already driven to an undisclosed location and dumped the thousands of bottles of Santo Tequila worth upwards of $1 million.
Eventually, Santo Spirits discovered that they were victims of cargo theft. Guy Fieri was then informed that the two semi-trucks worth of his tequila had been lost, and he could hardly believe what he was hearing:
“I said, ‘Elaborate on lost.’ He says, ‘Well, they disappeared.’ I said, ‘Well, wait, wait, wait, is this a hijacking?’ I said, ‘Are the drivers okay?’ ‘Cause all my mind goes to is ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s what I’m thinking is happening.
And he said, ‘No, no, no, no, the trucks, it– they were appropriated but we don’t know where they are.’ I’m like, it– it’s not a needle in a haystack. I mean, this is a semi-tractor truck. My mind is swimming in exactly how do you lose, you know, that many thousands of bottles of tequila?”
How do you lose that many bottles of tequila? You get duped by some cybercriminals taking advantage of the internet-dependent shipping system.
Guy Fieri and Santo Spirits reported the missing shipment, and the investigation ensued. For a while, it seemed as though the 24,000 bottles vanished into thin air. And because much of the Santo Tequila inventory wasn’t on shelves (because they were nowhere to be found), the company was unfortunately forced to lay some people off.
The silver lining? After the Los Angeles Police Department got a tip from a delivery driver as to where he had dropped off some inventory, they were able to bust a warehouse that just so happened to be housing 11,000 bottles of Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar’s Santo Tequila (they were able to successfully recover and sell the bottles after inspection). So it wasn’t a total loss… though the other truck and it’s thousands of bottles have yet to be found, and probably won’t ever be.
It’s an astounding story that Guy Fieri still can’t wrap his head around, but he wanted to talk about it publicly in hopes that the big-time scam won’t happen to others:
“It’s not a thing I wanna go and brag about, like, ‘Hey, we got ripped off.’ That’s not fun. But if it can happen to us with what I believe were pretty strong measures and security and awareness and, you know, communication and, you know, the way we do business.
And to get ripped off for two full semi-truck loads of tequila in today’s age, then everybody’s vulnerable.”
The more you know…
