Scammers hijacked the identity of a San Antonio freight broker to steal cargo. A fast-growing form of fraud exploits gaps in federal oversight.
DALLAS — “When will your driver be there exactly? Can you tell me the ETA?”
That’s how the call began.
What the person on the other end didn’t know — he wasn’t talking to a trucking company. He was talking to the real company he was impersonating.
The call was recorded by Tanager Logistics, a San Antonio-based freight broker whose identity had been hijacked by scammers operating from overseas.
“What’s the product on this load?” the real Tanager Logistics asked.
“It’s going to be beverages,” the imposter Tanager Logistics responded.
“They stole our identity and were then brokering loads to unsuspecting, legitimate motor carriers,” said Adam Blanchard, owner of Tanager Logistics.
In 2023, criminals used a fake email address and Tanager’s logo to pose as the company. They booked real trucking companies to haul loads, then redirected some of those shipments straight into the hands of thieves.
“These criminals would call them and say, instead of delivering it where the paperwork says, deliver it to this warehouse,” Blanchard said.
That’s when the cargo would vanish.
Blanchard says they discovered what was happening when the legitimate trucking companies contacted them, wanting to be paid.
“It was an absolute nightmare,” he said. “The reputational damage that’s resulted from it—it’s something that’s affecting us to this very day.”
Industry experts say Blanchard’s experience is far from unique.
“Cargo theft in the United States fundamentally changed somewhere between 2020 and 2022,” said Scott Cornell, who leads a cargo theft investigation unit at Travelers Insurance.
“Post-COVID, cargo thieves became aware of the fact that, hey, I can be anywhere and steal freight anywhere,” Cornell said. “I can basically use all sorts of trickery and nefarious methods to trick people into believing that I’m somebody I’m not.”
It’s called strategic cargo theft, and it’s jumped nearly 1,500% over the last three years, according to data from CargoNet. The average loss tops $200,000 per incident — and Texas ranks among the hardest-hit states.
“The cost of cargo theft impacts the cost of goods,” Cornell said. “The more frequently we see these things stolen, the more expensive they’re going to become.”
One of the biggest loopholes exploited by scammers involves motor carrier numbers, or MC numbers, issued by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
“They’ll buy the MC number so it looks like a legitimate business on paper, but it’s actually an organized crime ring behind it,” Cornell said.
Florida-based freight broker Brian Watt watched the scam unfold in real time.
“The company looked good on paper but had just sold its MC to an unsavory group that was using the identity to steal loads,” Watt said.
In one case, Watt said, the scammers stole nine shipments of tires.
“They showed up on a Saturday… and started setting up shop on the streets of Compton, Irvine, and other places,” he said.
The agency that issues motor carrier numbers is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. They said in a statement that they do “not regulate the sale of assets” such as motor carrier numbers. A 1995 law removed the agency’s power to approve when trucking or freight companies sell or transfer their motor carrier numbers, also known as their “operating authority.”
But according to federal guidelines, they can still oversee it, get information about it, and take action if something doesn’t seem right. In fact, the Federal Register states the 1995 law did not eliminate the agency’s “inherent authority to oversee transfers nor prohibit FMCSA from recording or monitoring the ownership or commercial and operational safety consequences of the transfer transaction.”
“You don’t have to regulate the sale, but you have to know who bought it to see if they’re authorized to have it because they’re engaged in interstate commerce,” said Dale Prax, owner of FreightValidate, a company that tracks fraud and identity theft in the trucking industry.
Adam Blanchard says he approached state and federal law enforcement agencies about the scammers impersonating his company.
“It was just dead end after dead end,” he said.
That’s what led to the phone call to the impersonators.
“About two or three minutes in, we said, ‘Hey—we are also Tanager Logistics. You’ve stolen our identity. We’re informing law enforcement of what you’re doing,” Blanchard said. “They let us know, with the click of a button, that they were not interested in talking any further.”
The scammers disappeared after that call. Blanchard took his story to Capitol Hill in February.
“Our American dream turned into a nightmare,” he told lawmakers.
“Currently, criminals view trucking as a low-risk, high-reward target. We must invert that calculus,” he said, urging Congress to strengthen oversight and give law enforcement better tools to investigate and prosecute cargo theft.
This report is part of WFAA’s “Hidden Dangers” series, uncovering the unseen threats in America’s freight industry.