Police complain that courts treat nonviolent cargo theft as low-priority property crime. Meanwhile, jurisdictional conflicts keep local police from tackling the problem effectively. According to cargo-theft experts, most goods are taken near ports and then transferred to waiting cargo containers and quickly shipped out of the country. At ports like Miami, stolen goods such as perfume, fashions, small electronics and, of course, expensive computers and components vanish in a flood of legitimate commerce. That means buyers have international outlets for the goods, not to mention false documents and the know-how to move things past Customs.
Cargo theft is a very organized business.
Well-organized operations Buyers of stolen cargo, who are sometimes respected members of the international trade community, tell gangs what to take. The gangs, in turn, scout appropriate companies and warehouses, sometimes hiring on as menial workers to learn how and when valuable goods move. Some steal the entire unit. When an earthquake shook Taiwan in September and the price of computer memory chips made there jumped, buyers put in their orders. Randy Andrews, a San Jose, Calif., security expert, said that small crews began arriving in Silicon Valley from all over the country.