Elite task force targets cargo theft

JOE CALLAHAN Associated Press

Sat, May. 10, 2003

MIAMI - On a March afternoon, Detective Hugo Gomez peered down from Freedom Tower - the Ellis Island of Florida - at the Dante B. Fascell Port of Miami-Dade. Decades ago, 400,000 Cuban refugees had come through the tower on their way to a life in America.

Now, Gomez, himself a Cuban-American, looked down on another challenge: combating the theft of billions of dollars in cargo - clothes, computers, cell phones, cigarettes. The port is the tip of a great funnel that extends through the Southeast. From Miami, the stolen cargo is shipped to black markets in foreign countries. ­

Gomez has worked undercover for seven years as part of one of the nation's elite cargo theft task forces, infiltrating the largest ring of cargo thieves out of Miami. Experts say cargo theft rings have hundreds of cells in 43 states.

He is a member of the Tactical Operations Multi-agency Cargo Anti-Theft Squad. The 36-member TOMCATS is the nation's largest cargo-theft task force. It has arrested 617 people and recovered $117 million in stolen goods since 1998.

The TOMCATS and other teams on the prowl for cargo thieves have gained insight into their methods. Gomez and other task force members train police around the country on thieves and how they work.

"It would surprise you," Gomez said, "how many times some agencies let these guys go after a traffic stop, even though they had burglary tools and other obvious signs they were about to conduct a theft. We're trying to educate these agencies."

Cargo thieves prey on containers at ports and on trains and 18-wheeler trailers. The TOMCATS often investigate thefts in Miami at the port, where bandits often carefully drill out the hinge pins of cargo container doors, leaving the security seal intact.

They pry open the door, remove the goods, place bags of sand inside and put new pins in the hinges. When the thieves are done, no one can tell they were there.

"During raids of warehouses, we often find sand and bags, all items they use to put back inside the containers so that they win not feel empty," said TOMCATS commander Ed Petow, a lieutenant with Miami­-Dade police. "And if the seal has not been disturbed, then there's no suspicions that the container had been tampered with."

The theft goes unnoticed until the container reaches its destination. That makes investigations difficult, because no one knows for sure where the cargo was stolen. Did the theft occur at a foreign port, at the U.S. port or during transit?

"They are really a sophisticated group using unsophisticated tactics to steal cargo," Petow said. "They know what they want and know how to get it. Every time we make an arrest and there's a court case, they learn even more ways to beat us,"

In the depositions by law enforcement officers, the thieves find new ways around security.

Outside of port cities, Petow said cargo thieves work methodically. One technique is to patrol the state, locating is-wheeler trailers that have been left overnight, usually on the weekend, at truck stops.

Because most cities have laws forbidding is-wheeler trailers in neighborhoods, many truckers leave full loads at truck stops, sometimes for a whole weekend. The thieves either peek through inspection doors to view the cargo, or just take a chance on what is inside.

"That's when they will call a driver, who brings a tractor to the location, backs up to it and hooks up the air hoses. ... He's gone in minutes," Petow said. "That's when they will either drive to a warehouse in Miami or another facility to transfer the goods."

Stepped up enforcement in Florida is pushing the bandits to other states, where they steal a load and drive to a warehouse. They move the cargo to a legal trailer, make a bill of lading and drive to Miami. Macon, Ga., has become a central location for those warehouses, which are basically transfer sites.

Once the cargo is on a legal trailer, Petow said, it's hard to prove it was stolen.

Sometimes a group of four or five thieves rent a car, go to another state and follow expensive loads from distribution centers or factories. They usually target a truck leaving in the afternoon, knowing the driver usually stops within a few hours for break.

When the trucker goes inside to eat, one of the men goes in to watch the driver. Another keeps a lookout while a master burglar enters the truck and starts it. One of the men is a driver with a commercial driver's license.

"They don't want to draw attention to the truck, so they make sure they have certified drivers," Petow said, Sometimes the group will drive the truck to a remote location, leave it unattended for 30 minutes and wait to see if the police show up.

That's in case the truck has a tracking device.

"If the police do not come in that time," Petow said, "they assume no one is coming."

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Here's a tale from the TOMCATS case files:

Last September, five Miami-area men drove a rented van to North Carolina, staying in a motel near a cigarette distribution center. The following day, just after noon, they began following an is-wheeler, until it stopped at a West Virginia rest area.

Seconds after the driver left the cab, and while one thief watched his movements, another smashed a window, and 32-year-old Lazardo Rey hot-wired the tractor. An expert, Rey had it running in seconds. (He was out of jail on bond at the time, in connection with the theft several months earlier of a load of cigarettes in Georgia.)

Two certified drivers jumped into the cab. As they drove away, one ripped a tracking device out of the cab. Rey and the other two men followed dose behind in the van. They were stopped by the West Virginia state police and arrested.

When the thieves get away, the goods are usually sold and shipped out of country within 24 hours. The thieves immediately call a middleman, or broker, who issues a list of stolen merchandise.

In some cases, the cargo thieves do not know what they have until they open the doors.

While the truck is en route, the broker will set up a deal with a buyer. By the time they reach Miami, the driver knows what warehouse to take it to so that it can be unloaded into containers for shipment.

The brokers and buyers avoid any conta9: with the stolen goods. Once the deal is done, each party gets a percentage of the sale.

In some cases, goods do end up in a warehouse for several days, which is risky for the cargo thieves. That was the case in February 2002, when TOMCATS agents raided a Miami warehouse and discovered $1.3 million in goods stolen in four trailer heists.

Agents found $169,000 worth of air conditioners stolen in South Carolina; $76,000 worth of sportswear from Hialeah Gardens; $77,000 worth of Mitsubishi air conditioner parts from Georgia; and $1 million in cigarettes from Boca Raton. Five men were arrested afterward.

Relatively few thefts are "give-ups," in which the trucker sets up a deal with thieves and intentionally leaves the trailer where it can be stolen. Recently, the thieves have begun using false identification to pick up containers at railroad yards.

Petow said members of Miami's cargo-theft ring have been arrested all over the United States.

Senior Detective Marc Zavala - with BAD-CATS, the Los Angeles Police Department cargo-theft squad - said in the last several years he has arrested more and more suspects from the Miami-Dade County area.

"Especially when it comes to cigarettes, we are seeing more and more loads ending up here," said Zavala, who has been a member of the Burglary Auto Division Criminal Apprehension Team since about 1990.

The cigarettes show up in California and New York because, with their higher taxes, the black market smokes can sell for much more there than in, say, North Carolina, which has the nation's lowest cigarette tax.

Las Vegas police are also seeing more cargo thefts by people from Miami.

New York Police Department Detective Sgt. Buddy Murrane, head of the Safe Loft and Truck Squad, said many heists there involve people from Latin America, especially Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, and others with ties to Miami.

The groups of thieves are not technically tied together, Petow said, though many have the same brokers supplying buyers.