Cargo theft today rarely looks like theft.
There is no forced entry, no broken seals at pickup, and often no immediate sign that anything is wrong. Increasingly, the loss begins much earlier in the process, during booking. Across the industry, a growing number of disappearances and mis-deliveries are tied to loads booked through normal channels using what appear to be legitimate carrier identities. Communication is professional and handled almost entirely by email. Rate confirmations are issued. Drivers arrive on time with clean paperwork. From the shipper’s perspective, it is a standard, uneventful pickup. Hours later, the freight is moving in the opposite direction of its intended destination.
A controlled diversion, not a single theft
What follows is rarely a single moment of theft. Instead, the freight is deliberately diverted. Loads may pass through multiple hands, move through informal cross-dock locations, and be unsealed, worked, and resealed before quietly entering secondary channels. There is no confrontation, no visible crime scene, and no obvious point of failure. The loss is the result of coordinated exploitation of process gaps rather than force. “These events succeed because they blend into routine operations,” said Christopher Allen, a freight fraud investigator and insurance specialist at The Bannon Report. “The objective is to look normal. The less friction a transaction creates, the more likely it is to move unchecked.”
When legitimate paperwork is not enough
On paper, many of the carriers tied to these incidents appear compliant. Authority is active. Insurance is in place. Documentation is complete. Traditional vetting steps are satisfied. The risk does not come from a single red flag. It emerges when behavior is evaluated in context. At The Bannon Report, these patterns become visible only when operational behavior is compared against peer carriers operating in similar lanes and conditions. Booking velocity, contact data changes, equipment usage, communication timing, and movement patterns often deviate subtly from industry norms. Individually, these signals may appear benign. Collectively, they form a clear risk profile. “A carrier can look legitimate in isolation,” Allen said. “But when their behavior consistently falls outside normal patterns, that’s where the exposure lives.”
Drivers pulled into the middle
These schemes increasingly draw legitimate drivers into the process as well. In many cases, drivers accept loads they believe are valid and complete pickups without incident, only to later find themselves associated with a disappearance they did not orchestrate. The fraud often occurs before dispatch, not behind the wheel. This shift complicates recovery efforts and liability discussions. With no forced entry and no clear moment of theft, accountability becomes difficult to trace once freight has already moved through multiple hands.
Booking is now a risk-event
The uncomfortable reality is that booking is no longer an administrative step. It is a risk- event. Processes built on speed and trust are being exploited by actors who understand exactly how to operate within them. “Normal” is no longer a safeguard. Verification must extend beyond authority and insurance, and even small delays introduced into the booking process can disrupt schemes that depend on volume and momentum. Cargo theft has evolved upstream. Controls must evolve with it. Awareness remains the first layer of defense, but awareness alone is no longer sufficient unless it is paired with earlier, deeper evaluation of risk.
By Phillip Brink, CEO of The Bannon Report