The Catch of the Day Could Be Hot

The two clerks working the late shift at Long Beach Harbor were about to release a $590,500 shipment of frozen lobster tails when they sensed something was wrong.

They noticed that the truck driver who had come to pick it up was wearing a sweater and expensive slacks--not exactly typical trucker attire. And they wondered why someone would pick up a lobster shipment at midnight, when all of the local cold storage warehouses were closed.

But he produced the required paperwork, identifying the load’s serial number and its exact contents: 1,000 cartons of Australian cold-water crustaceans. A supervisor ordered the shipment released despite the clerks’ misgivings, and the big rig rumbled out of the International Transportation Services dock area, hauling the 20-foot trailer and groaning into higher gear as it headed into the night.

Company officials did not realize that they had been duped until the next day, when the real trucker showed up with the real paperwork. They had turned over more than half a million dollars worth of lobster to a thief.

“They knew exactly what they were coming for,” said one company official, who asked not to be identified. “If someone goes to that much effort, they’re going to get what they want.”

What they wanted was seafood.

Investigators who scour Los Angeles’ streets, warehouses and harbors looking for stolen cargo say there is little wonder why. Frozen seafood, particularly lobster and shrimp, have emerged as top targets for cargo thieves in recent years. The seafood is valuable, nearly impossible to trace and moves quickly on the black market.

Detectives assigned to these cases believe that when a seafood theft is reported, they often have as little as 24 hours before the evidence is slathered in drawn butter and devoured by someone wearing a bib.

Frozen seafood is “easily unpacked, repacked and shipped out,” said sheriff’s Lt. Jack Jordan, former chief of Los Angeles’ multi-agency cargo theft task force. “And then it’s on somebody’s plate.”

“It could go anywhere,” said John Hyde, a security expert on the board of the Alexandria, Va.-based National Cargo Security Council. “If you’ve got boxes of shrimp spread all over the metropolitan area, who the hell’s going to identify that?”

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Not only can’t they identify it, investigators are not sure just how much seafood is ripped off each year. But of the $6 billion in freight stolen annually nationwide, seafood thefts could easily amount to tens of millions of dollars, law enforcement and industry officials say.

Along with sophisticated thieves operating with inside information, brazen gangs of armed bandits have turned cargo theft into an epidemic in port cities such as Los Angeles, Miami and New York. International Transportation Services fell victim to document forgery in the 1995 lobster heist, but thieves have broken into warehouses, bribed drivers and hijacked trucks at gunpoint.

And they are probably receiving inside help, investigators said. Trucks carrying frozen food are easy to spot on the road. Grapes, broccoli, seafood and many other products are usually shipped in refrigerated trailers with easy-to-see electrical equipment at one end. But knowing which trailers are full of valuable seafood and which contain only vegetables requires inside information, authorities say.

“It tends to be . . . more than just randomly stolen,” Hyde said. “It requires an internal conspiracy.”

Trouble is, information about every shipment flows through a far-flung network of importers, wholesalers, freight brokers, truckers and dockworkers. That makes it nearly impossible for authorities to pinpoint leaks.

In recent years, some harbor terminals and trucking companies have been taking precautions to cut down the risk of theft. Cameras snap pictures of truck drivers and their license plates as they leave or enter some terminals. Trucking companies often instruct drivers not to make any stops when making short trips within the Los Angeles area.

But the heists continue, sometimes with drivers’ assistance, investigators say.

While hauling a $200,000 shipment of frozen Thai shrimp to a cold storage warehouse in downtown Los Angeles in February, one trucker said he stopped to pick up some motor oil. Shortly after he climbed back into the truck cab and returned to the road, he felt a cold steel gun barrel against the back of his neck.

Two gunmen emerged from the sleeper compartment and demanded that he pull over, he told authorities.

“I don’t want any problems,” he quoted one of the bandits as saying. “If you give me any problems, I will blow your head off.”

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The trucker said he was blindfolded and bound with black nylon cord. He was then removed from the truck, put in a four-wheel-drive vehicle and driven to Pacoima, where he was dropped off. At least one of the gunmen took off with the load of shrimp, he said.

It was not an unusual scenario. But days later, when investigators went to ask the trucker to take a polygraph, they discovered that he had vanished. An insurance investigator believes that the driver was part of the scheme to steal the shrimp. The man had worked at the trucking company for only three months and has not been found.

Similar investigations are unfolding in New York, where last fall a truck hauling frozen calamari arrived at its destination safely--but missing $15,000 worth of product. Port police examined the refrigerated trailer, outfitted with a device to monitor changes in temperature, a bit like an aircraft flight recorder tracks changes in altitude.

Temperature fluctuations indicated that the trailer had been open for some 90 minutes, even though the trip from the harbor to the truck’s destination should have taken only half an hour, investigators said. When pressed, the driver confessed that he had allowed accomplices to steal the calamari, and led investigators to several warehouses where they recovered millions of dollars worth of stolen perfume, furniture and other goods.

For some seafood companies, such as Orient Fisheries in Vernon, the risk of theft extends across international borders. A trucker accompanied by his 12-year-old son was hauling $200,000 worth of frozen shrimp to Los Angeles from the Mexican city of Oaxaca several months ago when a sport-utility vehicle and a pickup truck raced onto the highway. Men armed with automatic weapons ordered the big rig off the road.

“You won’t be harmed,” one man promised the driver and his terrified son. “We’re just interested in the shrimp.”

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The truck showed up in Mexico City 12 days later--empty. Orient Fisheries now plans to have armed escorts in separate vehicles accompany seafood shipments in Mexico, company Vice President Raul Gutierrez said.

“You don’t want a truck driver risking his life for the shrimp,” Gutierrez said.

Authorities in Los Angeles, New York and Miami say the odds of recovering stolen seafood are slim at best. Thieves find a ready market for their booty because they offer lobster and shrimp at prices far below market value, and shady wholesalers or restaurant owners gladly oblige.

“People who are getting really good deals may not hear the word ‘stolen,’ but it’s understood,” said sheriff’s Sgt. Dewayne Shackelford, an investigator with the cargo theft task force. “When you’re talking about a [salesman] with no address, who doesn’t have anything but a pager number, it’s not a legitimate businessman.”

If thieves fail to immediately sell the seafood, they must find either a refrigerated warehouse to store it or a power source to keep the trailer’s electrical refrigeration equipment running. Seafood that has defrosted and been frozen again can be contaminated and presents a serious public health hazard, officials said.

Law enforcement and industry officials in Los Angeles believe that the lion’s share of seafood stolen in Southern California is consumed locally, but they speculate that some of it may be taken to Mexico or Las Vegas, where hotels hawk bargain lobster dinners. And authorities also wonder just where that bargain-priced seafood sold from the backs of trucks and at temporary roadside stands comes from.

Nationwide, only a handful of restaurateurs have been arrested for receiving stolen property in recent years, but authorities remain convinced that the thefts are driven by demand from restaurants who are willing to sell “hot” entrees.

Said the National Cargo Security Council’s Hyde: “Everybody loves a bargain.”

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Several Los Angeles restaurateurs and seafood wholesalers said lobster and shrimp are readily available on the black market, but they insisted that their businesses avoid suspiciously low-priced seafood.

Sam King, president of University Restaurant Group, a Long Beach company that operates several seafood restaurants, said salesmen come calling monthly, offering bargain seafood. He always turns them down, he said.

“They just kind of show up at your back door and say, ‘Hey, come look at what I’ve got,’ ” King said. “There is a very large market for that stuff.”

Alan Redhead, chief executive of California Beach Restaurants, owner of Gladstone’s 4 Fish in Pacific Palisades, said that if he were offered such products below market value, “I’d want to know why. Where is it coming from? My next call would be to the police.”

Warned an official at Special Foods International, an El Segundo wholesaler: “You stay away from it like the plague. You’re buying nothing but trouble.”