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Published in the Seattle Times
By Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton , Seattle Times business reporter
Dec. 31, 2025
Costco recently found itself in a pinch after criminals allegedly stole $400,000 worth of lobster headed to its stores in Illinois and Minnesota.
Earlier this month, thieves pilfered a truck carrying lobster meat in Taunton, Mass., said Dylan Rexing, president and CEO of Rexing Companies, on Tuesday.
His business in Evansville, Ind., coordinates product shipments for manufacturing companies. In this instance, it planned the logistics to transport the lobster meat from a processor, which Rexing declined to name, to Costco through a carrier he had previously used.
Scammers made sure that didn’t happen, he said.
According to Rexing, criminals posed as the regular carrier over email, a scamming tactic known as spoofing. Then, in order to secure the goods on Dec. 12, thieves allegedly changed the name on the side of their truck and presented a phony driver’s license.
“We believe it’s a crime organization,” Rexing said in a phone interview.
Costco didn’t respond to a request for comment.
With crustaceans in mind, thieves have been trying for the whole seafood tower.
A load of crab was also allegedly stolen on Dec. 2 from the same facility, which Rexing said he learned from the local police department. Taunton Police Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
And around 150 miles north, 14 cages of full-grown oysters — a haul worth $20,000 — were lifted from a facility in Falmouth, Maine, on Nov. 22, The Associated Press reported.
As for Rexing, he’s waiting to determine the full scope of the damages to his company.
“It will definitely hit our pocketbook in one way, shape or form,” he said. “It puts a scar on our reputation.”
But he emphasized that the broader problem isn’t limited to his business.
“This is happening all over the country every single day,” Rexing said. “Truly, this affects everybody.”
‘Such a massive issue’
Washington stands out as a hot spot for cargo theft.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau ranked Washington as one of the five states most impacted by cargo theft, alongside California, Texas, Illinois and Florida. It accounted for 3.5% of total U.S. retail theft — which includes cargo theft — in 2021, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
A Seattle-based company suffered a major blow that made headlines in September. Westland Distillery’s warehouse in Burlington, Skagit County, was targeted in a scheme to steal 12,000 bottles of whiskey — worth an estimate of $924,000 in retail value.
“I don’t know that consumers know that cargo theft — or even more broadly, organized retail crime — is such a massive issue,” said Crystal Leatherman, director of policy and government affairs at the Washington Retail Association in Olympia.
As a state with port cities, Washington attracts retail theft, Leatherman said in a phone interview Tuesday.
“When you have these goods stolen and taken off shelves, that’s lost tax revenue for the state and for local governments,” she said. “That’s lost resources that could go into all the social safety net programs that our state has.”
Nationwide, the National Insurance Crime Bureau estimated that annual losses from cargo theft can reach up to $35 billion.
Losses tied to cargo theft jumped 27% in 2024, per NICB, which predicted that statistic would surge an additional 22% this year. Among its list of top stolen goods: food and beverage, along with alcohol and tobacco.
The challenge has caught the attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., reintroduced legislation in April that would form an Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center within the Department of Homeland Security to tackle the issue.
“The rise in organized retail crime has left businesses scrambling, and it is time for Congress to pass this bipartisan legislation to help law enforcement agencies keep our communities safe,” Cortez Masto said in a statement at the time.
Leatherman noted that the Washington Retail Association backs the proposed bill.
A Senate subcommittee held a hearing on cargo theft in February, and a Senate committee followed up with a hearing on criminal networks and organized theft in July.
The American Transportation Research Institute depicts cargo theft as a longstanding issue in the trucking industry, according to an October report. However, the sector is now contending with not only physical crimes but also digital threats.
“These thefts are often orchestrated from thousands of miles away, are far less brazen than traditional thefts and can sometimes take weeks to detect,” the report states. “While supply chain visibility and automation have dramatically improved over the last two decades, that same digital environment has given cargo thieves unfettered access to cargo and customer data.”
The research institute explained that cargo thefts typically take place in “major cities with strained law enforcement, numerous busy interstate corridors, and significant freight activity,” though Seattle was not mentioned as one of the cities with surging incidents of cargo theft.
Instead, that list included Chicago, Houston and Miami, along with Savannah, Ga.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Newark, N.J.
*Original headline: Costco loses $400,000 worth of lobster as cargo theft rises
