Savor Does Time with Food Heists

Forget fine art, gold, or jewels – food and drink make up over a quarter of all cargo heists worldwide. (It’s the largest single category!) Anney and Lauren explore the strange, sad, thrilling, and sometimes sorta hilarious world of food heists.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of I Heart Radio
and Stuff Media. I'm Ann and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and
today we're talking about food heists. Yeah, and we were
discussing before we started recording. This could be the entire show.
This is a surprisingly in depth. In depth isn't a word.
There's a lot of stories to pick from, deep and

(00:28):
broad topic that it happens all the time. Some of
them are real fascinating, some of them are real sad.
A lot of them are real weird, real weird. I
mean just by necessity, because it's food. You know, you're
like paintings. Okay, yeah, I've seen Thomas Crown affair, like
I get it right, like or like cars or Dimond

(00:49):
like whatever it is. We hear about all of this stuff,
but just it's necessarily a little funny when you're like shrimp, right,
And I've I'm convinced because Ryan Johnson just announced there's
gonna be knives out too. Oh yeah, and I think
that should be food based. We need to call him.

(01:11):
You've got his number, right, no, darn it? Well, if
anybody has the way to contact him, please let us know.
Because as we were thinking about this. We've talked about
this a lot in past episodes. Um, well, what were
some of them? Coca cola that was more of a
stock fraud, but still honey, nutella and maple syrup, I

(01:31):
think lime, and French fries and spam and chicken wings
and alligator definitely had some like poaching issues in there too. Yeah. Yeah,
I think the first time that I learned that that
food heists are a thing was while working on an
old show here called House to Works Now. We did
this episode about avocado heists and I was just like

(01:52):
what And it was just the weirdest thing I had
read about that day. And that's an impressive at this
job very much. So yeah, yeah, I think Ben Boalin
turned it, turned me onto it a while back because
I just never I feel terrible saying I just never

(02:12):
really thought about it. But we've got a lot of
examples and we could have kept going maybe a part two. Yeah, Okay,
So in the meantime, let's get to our question food
iced what are they? Well, sometimes people steal stuff and

(02:35):
sometimes that stuff is food, and like we're not talking
about like Aladdin nabbing like a loaf of bread, so
that like him and a boo, don't starve. We are
talking crimes ranging from like a crime of opportunity, like
us see that trailer, I'm I'll steal it, to like
full on premeditated, highly orchestrated heists. Yes, some of which

(02:57):
go on for years, years, some of which are ongoing
now true. And this brings us back to nimes out too,
because when I was doing this research, there are agricultural detectives. Gosh,
yes there are, Okay, all right. Just to start with,
the United States Department of Agriculture has an Office of
Inspector General that employs about a hundred and thirty agents

(03:21):
around the country who investigate all kinds of crime related
to agriculture, from like fraud to animal abuse, to mismanagement
of federal funds, to like food safety issues to thievery.
On their career page, they say, think about the vast
interests of the United States and the global agricultural market imports, exports,
North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Far East. The

(03:41):
sun never sets on U S d A. WHOA, I know, dramatic,
I love it, yes, um, and yeah, that is far
from all of the investigators who are working in the field.
Pun absolutely intended after I realized I'd made it. Um. Yeah,
there are private detectives available for higher states and counties

(04:02):
with a lot of business and agriculture often have specialized
departments within their law enforcement agencies. France's wine region has
environmental officers who patrol on horseback. That needs to be
a show right there, right, come on, Netflix, make it happen,
please forward for the good of all of us. One
private investigator who's who's really great with the press, pops

(04:23):
up in a lot of these articles and podcasts about
this sort of thing. Um. A Rocky Pipkin of the
Pipkin Detective Agency explained to the California Sunday Magazine why
he specializes in agricultural crime. And he points out that,
you know, like crops are plentiful and valuable and quote,
it's easy fence it. Everybody's got to eat. True, very true.

(04:46):
And we have some numbers for you. Boy, do I
mean this whole episode is a lot of numbers. This
is the number heavy episode. So food and drink not
including alcohol, account for twenty seven per cent of all
cargo heist And this is from a report compiled by
Freight Watch International. That's more than auto parts, electronics, and
pharmaceuticals put together. It makes up the most of any

(05:09):
one category. Yeah, that number jumped from yeah. From the report,
particularly stolen loads of nuts, seafood, candy, cookies and snacks, dairy,
and eggs and meat all more than doubled from spiking
on sevent and two hundred and seven, respectively. Two increase

(05:36):
in stolen loads of eggs. I think meat. Oh oh, meat, okay, okay.
I was like, either way, that makes more sense than eggs.
I'm like running through like supermarket sweep. In my head,
I'm like, how do you steal that many? They're so
delicate or not cool. One of the possible reasons cited

(05:59):
for this the general lower security around food cargo. Um, yeah,
but but these that's also happened on the farms themselves.
In California alone, the theft of crops, supplies, and equipment
results in an annual loss of thirty million dollars to
the States farmers annual um and according to San Benito
County's Office of Agricultural Investigations, only one in ten farm

(06:23):
crimes are reported, and nationwide annual losses run around a
billion dollars. The most often stolen food. Cheese doesn't surprise
me personally, but and He's like, if I were going
to get into food heist, I would totally steal cheese probably,
although I you know, my laziness would compete with my

(06:46):
love of cheese because I don't want to do anything refrigerated.
Oh yeah, but I would ever clearly not. I haven't
put a lot of thought to it or anything. After
almost five million pounds as in the monetary unit of
the British minetary unit of cheese were listed as stolen
in the UK alone. One report labeled them a high

(07:08):
risk food and one thing I read in The Atlantic
claimed that four percent of all cheese produced will end
up stolen. That is statistically significant, very much. Uh yeah.
That that that piece in the Atlantic, by the way,
is uh partially is a partial transcript of an episode
of Gastropod, which if you haven't listened to go check

(07:30):
it out. It's really great. Yes, yeah, very helpful for
this episode it was. And uh and Rocky is is
a guest on there, so yes, um so yeah. Um.
We've got like not really like a history, just like
a I mean some history, but more examples examples galore. Yes, Um,

(07:53):
and we will get into that as soon as we
get back from a quick break for a word from
our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you,
and yes, so one disclaimer before we get started. As
we said at the top, a lot of these stories
are on the surface, super fun, funny, rife for penny headlines. Yeah,

(08:20):
but under the service maybe not so much. Yeah, it's
a very serious topic. Yes, maybe drugs are involved or
other crimes. We're not gonna go too much into that
that particular aspect of it in this episode unless it's
really relevant to the whole food stealing part of it, right, Yeah,
but um, but yeah, it really is. Um A lot
of the time is involved with other types of organized

(08:40):
crime and uh, potential violence and you know, like not desperation,
bad bad times exactly, and we don't want to trivialize
those things. Millions of dollars are lost. Again, it often
hurts farmers and laborers. One sheriff out of California that's
had to deal with a lot of almond theft said,
I think it's an economic act of terrorism. It impacts
us fiscally at so many levels. Yes, So disclaimer there, absolutely,

(09:07):
let's talk about cheese because, as we said, it is
one of the most, if not the most stolen product
it comes to food. Yes, all right, more specifically in
this first example, cheese car chase, cheese car chase. Yes.
In two tho nine, in a two thousand nine case
out of New Zealand, a couple fled the police with

(09:28):
twenty one blocks of stolen cheddar cheese. During the pursuit,
blocks of cheese went flying, making it certainly one of
the most interesting car chases I've ever read about. Yes,
but that's one of our very smallest like like like
number of things stolen examples very much so yeah. Um.
In Florida, someone stole a trailer containing dollars worth of

(09:53):
mozzarella um, destined for a hungry how He's Pizza distribution center.
The driver was like having a mechanic check out the
truck and someone made off with the trailer. Oh yeah.
In France, and a group of mysterious thieves stole forty
three thousand dollars worth of compete. That's about four tons
of cheese. Ah. Another cheese has took place in Wisconsin,

(10:17):
Illinois man attempted to abscond with an eighteen wheeler semi
full of munster after he presented falsified documents. Yeah, about
two hundred thousand dollars worth of cheese that the thief
meant for the black market, which is where a lot
of this ends up pounds. While the cheese was recovered,
the company couldn't immediately prove it hadn't been tampered with,

(10:38):
so they planned on testing it and donating it to
a charity if it passed the health inspections. Yeah. Um,
lots of cheese crime in Wisconsin, which I guess makes sense. Um,
in a trailer containing seventy thousand pounds of cheese was stolen.
And this this cheese had a wild day okay, like
it was stolen just after midnight the who tractor than

(11:01):
the thieves took the cheese and abandoned the trailer, but
the goods were recovered later that evening. That is a
wild wild night indeed. Oh Um. In the same week, though,
criminals made off with nine pounds of parmesan from a
Wisconsin warehouse. Dang, I know and who parmesan? Okay? Parmesan

(11:23):
cheese production in itself is a fascinating world that we're
gonna have to do a whole episode on and especially
the business of it because while UM new wheels are aging,
cheesemakers sometimes leverage loans to keep their business going with
actual wheels of cheese like some Italian banks, except wheels
of parmesan. That is amazing, yes, whoa. But because these

(11:47):
things are worth so much money, UM, there have been
ongoing problems with theft UM. A single wheel is worth
about six d bucks and since each wheel weighs like
forty kilos about ninety pounds, like, you've got to do
some planning if you're going to make off with a
small fortunes worth. But folks do it. Just one instance
in six saw a hundred and fifty wheels taken from

(12:08):
a warehouse outside of Parma Um between sixteen in total,
fifteen thousand wheels were stolen, worth a total of some
six million euros. That makes my stomach ur. This is
one time where I really wish we had like a
visual aspect of this podcast because the looks on our
face this is just horn and sad horn shock UM.

(12:33):
A single gang of eleven perpetrators UM have been arrested
for making off with two thousand and thirty nine wheels
of parmesan between that is eight hundred and seventy five
thousand dollars worth. Ah, oh my gosh, whof that is
a lot of cheese. It's not a little bit of cheese. No,

(12:56):
But now we're going to move away from cheese into
produce and farmed goods. Yes, And I wanted to kick
this section off with another car chase. Um a police
chase in a Seville, Spain ended with thousands of pounds
of oranges spilling dramatically from two robbers cars when they
were finally stopped and apprehended, Like just the cars, like

(13:18):
they were like little sedans and they were just filled
with Seville oranges. Yeah, that feels like it should be
in a movie. Maybe it already has. But remember when
we did oranges and they symbolize like B. And then
we gotta talk about walnuts. In eighty thousand pounds of

(13:39):
walnuts worth about three thousand dollars were stolen in northern California.
This is one of several walnut thefts in that state,
and thanks to an increasing demand for walnuts coming from
Asia coupled with a decrease in trees, this has led
to a rise in walnut theft there's apparently organized macadamia

(13:59):
nut crime in South Africa, and I'm shocked that this
didn't come up when we were researching macadamia nuts. But um,
but losses equalled over ten million American dollars per year
as of UM, like eight to fifteent of the yearly
crop of macadamia nuts. They're go missing and it is
some kind of inside job because the nuts are entering
the legit markets somehow. WHOA yeah, and then Sten, we

(14:24):
have avocado theft. New Zealand had a huge increase in that,
like forty large scale heist driven by growing international demand,
growing demand and also UM price surges due to poor
conditions resulting in smaller harvests. Avocado black markets pop up
pretty much wherever the fruit is grown. UM, and changing

(14:45):
weather patterns do in part to climate change, really fuel
that black market. UM. Yeah. In in for example, UM,
two thieves were questioned by police when they were found
near an orchard carrying just dove covers stuffed with all
acados like four thousand three dollars worth of avocados. In
a New York Times article about this entire thing, UM,

(15:06):
New Zealand's coordinator of Community policing. One Alistair McMillan is
quoted saying it's not like cannabis where people can say
it was for their own personal use. It's clearly not
for their own consumption. You can only put so much
avocado on your burger or in your sushi. True, I
think it might be more than estimated in some cases,

(15:27):
but true, I see the point. Yes, um yeah, gosh,
whole whole whole episode on avocados, like soon. Yeah, that's
been on our to do list for a long time.
It has. This one kind of surprised me. After prices
surge due to a bad harvest in Mexico, a group
of these pill for three hundred thousand dollars worth of tomatoes,

(15:48):
six tractor loads. Yeah that's a lot of tomato, it
really is. Um yeah, but but yeah, some some of
these large scale things in produce really are so surprising
to me and um. For example, in twenty eighteen, thieves
in Germany used professional harvesting equipment to strip a vineyard
of thirty five pounds of reasoning grapes basically it's whole crop,

(16:12):
and made off with them in a single afternoon. And
police expect rival winemaker because they targeted the vines with
the grapes that were just at the peak of rice.
They knew a similar operation the same year in Virginia
made off with five thousand pounds of grapes and in
a number of robberies resulted in almost sixteen thousand pounds

(16:33):
of Bordeaux grapes going missing. Um after a few consecutive
poor growing seasons. And this this is where I started
to go like, oh, oh, we're talking about the worst thing,
and it's making this sad. And I thought this was
gonna be a fun mark, but it's it is so
tragic because just it seems like because it's it's just

(16:53):
clearly these are the actions of rival winemakers who are desperate.
They just don't have product and they're desperate. Right, yeah, back,
We're currently working on episode on Caviar, which we'll get
doing a second but a similar things, similar thing, but
right now, let's talk about maple syrup. Oh yeah, this

(17:15):
did come up in our maple syrup episode, but it's
too big a thing not to mention. Again. Thieves in
Quebec stole millions of dollars of maple syrup from a warehouse,
about six million pounds total. Yes, all the syrup in
that specific warehouse accounts for or it did in twelve
one tenth of their harvest that year, a value of

(17:35):
about thirty million Canadian dollars. Around of the syrup was
eventually recovered. Yes, police suspect this was an ongoing operation,
resulting in at least eighteen million dollars worth of stolen
product from twelve. That's why some of the numbers when
you're looking at this one in specific or a little hazy,
because apparently it was going on for about a year.

(17:56):
Twenty six people have been arrested for their involvement. Up
the thieves rented space in that same warehouse and siphoned
off syrup while guards weren't around, and sometimes they replaced
the missing syrup with water. And reminder, one barrel of
maple syrup can be worth thirteen times that of crude oil.
Also reminder Quebec has that strategic emergency maple syrup. Yes,

(18:24):
and then honey. Honey has been at the center of
multiple food highest We did touch on some of those
as well in our Honey episodes. Took place in England
when thieves took off with over one jars of manuka honey,
which is very expensive stuff. In response, at least one
shopkeeper interviewed about all this started putting security dagging on

(18:45):
their product of Manuka honey. Oh makes perfect sense, Yeah,
it really does if you think about how much it's worth.
And yeah, I mean if you have if you have
a security tag on like a razor blade pack, then
come on, come on yea um. But yeah, sometimes whole
hives are stolen um in South Africa, thieves have taken hives,
whole hives and cut the comb out to harvest the

(19:06):
honey for quick saleh But hey, let's talk about meat.
Let's talk about meat, because it's gotten got up in
a few heist as well. One took place in Canada
when police were on the hunt for forty thousand pounds
or eighteen thou kis of stolen beef. The stolen product

(19:28):
was worth upwards of one hundred thousand dollars and it
was never found. Yes, this is not the first case
of meat theft in Canada five bar but it is
one of the largest. In another meat hi, criminals stole
container of hamburger meat valued around one hundred thousand from
a shipp yard in New Jersey. The thieves were never

(19:49):
apprehended and the meat never recovered. Yep. And then there
was a shrimp heist in Miami where a man stole
and re sold one hundred and fifty eight thousand dollars
worth of shrimp for yeah. Yeah. And then let's let's

(20:11):
look inward at our hometown of Atlanta. Who's gotten caught
up in a few of these, including that Coca Cola
one that we mentioned at the top. And we also
got to talk about one of Atlanta's favorite foods, chicken
wings during the Super Bowl chicken wings shortage, which is
a yearly thing. It happens every year. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(20:32):
See our chicken wing episode when we're on that. Two
thieves in Atlanta stole sixty five thousand dollars worth of
Tyson frozen chicken wings, about twenty six thousand pounds. They
pulled this off during broad daylight, using a forklift to
remove a crate of wings from a truck. They were
later caught and charged with the wings never recovered. And

(20:54):
then yes, a lot of headlines with foul play in
them ensued. I'm telling you, if you want to our
puns like they put us to shame, look into some
of these, and we seem very tape, It's all I'm saying.
And then we have a father and son doo that
they made off with about forty thousand dollars of chicken wings,

(21:16):
also from a restaurant that they worked in in Syracuse
in Yeah, inside jobs, inside jobs. But yeah, a few
of these seem to be that, yeah, including some of
the next ones we're going to talk about. In the
booze category. Yes, on Christmas Day, thieves made off with

(21:38):
seventy six bottles retailing around three hundred thousand dollars of
wine from the wine seller of California restaurant French Laundry.
Seventy two of the bottles were eventually recovered a couple
of months later in North Carolina, and the owner, yes,
suspected it may have been an inside job, Yeah, because
they went for the most expensive bottles, like rare Burgundies

(21:59):
and doze, a dozen bottles of burgundy from the same
producer went for over forty seven thousand dollars at auction.
Twelve bottles forty seven thou dollars. This is the level
of wine price that we're talking about them stealing, um,
and it was certainly well planned. Um. They conducted the
robbery the day after the restaurant closed for renovation that
was going to take months, and some of the perpetrators

(22:23):
are still in the loose. Two were caught. UM. They
were also involved in a wine heist from another California restaurant,
Alexander Steakhouse where thirty two tho dollars UM and from
a San Francisco store Warehouse Fine Wines International, worth two
nine thousand dollars. In the end, the two thieves who
were caught got caught because of the value of the wines.

(22:44):
Like at a certain level, UM, the producers of these
wines only make a certain number of bottles per year. Yeah,
and they're only sold by certain dealers, and people who
are in the market for this kind of thing know this,
and they know each other, and they hear about these
heists when they happen. So a suspicious buyer reported these
bottles that he had bought, and the investigators traced the
thieves through a broker Hoof Hoof. Indeed, in a gang

(23:11):
of ten people were arrested in Italy UM for allegedly
stealing sixteen thousand bottles of wine and a hundred and
sixty eight wheels of parmesan, worth a total of around
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars over the course of
two years. Like police and local prosecutors worked together to
set up a sting. My brain is having trouble. These

(23:35):
numbers are so big. Yeah, yeah, Like, I don't know
how much money that is, but that's a heck and
a lot of wine, a lot of flying, that is
for sure. On the less classy side, a thief in
Orlando stole a checker's new rig and its contents forty
four thousand pounds of Miller High Life. Yep, that's about

(23:57):
thirty two dollars worth of beer. Oh my gosh. Good news,
though the cargo was located soon after and the chucker's
rig returned to him. And this story is actually really
moving because he was so it was his new rig, like,
I'm just trying to make a living, and this is
so devastating for me that they found it and it
was returned to him. Um. This is on the hills
of several stolen semi trucks in the Orlando area, one

(24:20):
containing slim Fast, another Hershey chocolate, and yet another containing
one eighty thousand eggs. And according to mental floss. I
couldn't really find this anywhere else. Another Orlando case a
bit earlier in two thousand nine saw the loss of
six thousand cheesecakes lifted from a refrigerated rig estimated value
for dollars. This was a big deal in Orlando that

(24:41):
they were like, we've got to find out what. Yeah,
and then okay, we've talked before about the expensive and
highly sought after bourbon Happy van Winkle. This is old
Rip Van Winkle Distillery bourbon, and it has huge following

(25:02):
and a very limited supply. Yep. Some bottles go for
one thousand, five hundred dollars and some barrels go for
five thousand dollars on eBay. There's even a wait list
and it's reached over ten years on occasion. And uh,
if that's not for you, there's also an app called

(25:22):
Pappy Tracker, So as popular is the point we're making. Yes,
a syndicate of nine thieves out of Kentucky stole one
hundred thousand dollars worth of Pappy. The authorities eventually caught
them and recovered eighteen barrels, one of them worth eleven
thousand dollars and twenty five bottles of Pappy. Thirteen cases

(25:45):
were not found, and as far back as two thousand eight,
this syndicate had been behind several large scale bourbon robberies,
including a robbery of about twenty five thousand dollars of
Pappy old Rip van Winkle Distill your President, Julian P.
Van Winkle. The third claims that at least in the
following year after that first case, we mentioned pretty much

(26:08):
everyone he spoke to asked him if he had located
the missing bourbon. Yeah. Yeah. And then coming back to
Atlanta for a second, and about nine dollars worth of
our local brewery, Sweetwaters beer went missing too, whole flat bits.
The police found a good chunk of it in less

(26:29):
than an hour thanks to the GPS. Yeah, Sweetwater hired
a private investigator to locate the rest. That sounds very
much like them, honestly, and the beer was recovered in
less than a day. Unfortunately it all had to be destroyed.
Yeah again, going back to safety safe Yeah sure uh.

(26:51):
And then perhaps just the most unintentionally hilarious category packaged goods. Indeed,
so we'll start with the town I cannot ever pronounce,
but I try my best in thieves in What's Just Shirt,
Thank You cut into the side of a parked truck

(27:15):
and made off with six thousand, four hundred tens of
Haines baked beans worth about ten thousand dollars. Wow. Yeah,
I have to say I wasn't expecting Heinz big beans
in the food heist episode. But but nothing is off
the table, absolutely not. Everybody's got to eat true yea. Also,

(27:36):
in Going Back to Natilla, almost seven thousand jars were
stolen in Germany from a parked trailer, all whopping thirteen thousand,
six hundred euros worth of Nattella. The jars were partially
recovered located in a stolen stash that also included five
tons of coffee and thirty four thousand cans of Red Bull.

(27:56):
Thirty four thousand cans of Red Bull can you imagine?
I cannot. I don't want to this person, Well, our people,
caffeine was there their area. And this isn't the only
case involving to tell As we said that episode, suspicions
abounded that same year that five thousand dollars a week
worth of ntella was going missing at Columbia Universal. Right.

(28:19):
I don't know if they ever got to the bottom
of that. I really think it was just people taking
students students. Yeah, I might have participated it. I'm not
saying I did, but I could see myself doing it. Yes,
had you been Yeah, sure, of course not, of course not. Indeed,

(28:42):
a man in Florida stole a truckload of Campbell's soup
worth seventy five thousand dollars. After a thirty minute highway chase,
the authorities traced the riggs GPS, the police caught the perpetrator.
The judge later said of the case, this is the
first time the court has ever seen seventy five thousand

(29:04):
dollars worth of soup stolen. That's probably good, Yeah, and
I don't want too many cases of that. Probably never never,
never since either yeah, one would, one would hope, and
then yeah, caviare and two thousand five criminals made off
with four hundred and seventy thousand dollars of red caviare
during the Russian New Year. Caviar is a popular New
Year food in Russia. Eight DT five cans or twenty

(29:27):
two tons gone, all from one truck of one Moscow businessman.
Who yeah, yeah, that's a lot. That is. Criminals made
off with two d and sixty tons of lint chocolate
from their warehouse in Milan. While the two behind it

(29:48):
were caught, only about fifty tons of the chocolate was
ever accounted. For the value of the stolen chocolate eight
million euros. Mm hmm no. And then I found this
one really interesting. I hadn't really thought about about going
about it this way. The owners and managers of ten
Kentucky based convenience stores were arrested in when it was

(30:09):
discovered they were providing thieves with shopping list for items
to steal from local stores and pharmacies. Oh wow, like, hey,
we're running low on band aids. Like yeah, I guess enterprising.
UM here's maybe my favorite one of the episode. And

(30:30):
why I was a few minutes late coming in because
I found it and I wasn't going to not include it. Um. So,
last year, a man in Texas pled guilty to one
point two million dollars worth of fajita theft, slash fraud
over the course of almost ten years. What was going
on was he was working for UM. He was working
as a public servant at a juvenile detention center, and

(30:54):
he placed orders for fajitas using county funds hypothetically to
be served to the inmates, um, but then he would
sell the fahitas for his own profit. One point two
million dollars of fahitas. Yeah, and this was discovered when
like someone in the kitchen was alerted like, oh, hey,
there's a Fahita truck here with your fahita load, and

(31:15):
the kitchen human was like, we don't serve fahita's here.
Yeah hoof Yeah, yeah, that's pretty substantial number. I'm glad
you were a little late to include it. And of
course we talked about the black market for spam in
Hawaii in our spam episode. Some shops put spam behind
security cases alongside things like cell phones. And then in Georgia,

(31:40):
in thieves absconded with almost one hundred thousand dollars worth
of instant ramen. This is maybe I there's it's that
I can't even process. It's too much to process. Yes.
The thieves targeted a fifty three ft trailer of the noodles,

(32:03):
somewhere between two hundred thousand to five thousand packets, depending
on the brand. Wow. Yeah, I didn't think that was
going to come up either. At least it's lighter and
like less awkward than some of the other products we've
been talking about. That's true if we're looking at it logistically. Yeah,

(32:23):
we're not thieves. We're not a promise don't don't steal stuff.
Stealing stuff is bad, yes, indeed, But I mean we
didn't even touch we were also discussing before we started this,
fraud is something I have, I have more familiarity with,
I guess, and in some cases they obviously play along
with each other, they're they're part of the same thing.

(32:44):
But absolutely, yeah, there's a lot of like seafood fraud
we talked about a little bit, but things like that
we didn't even really touch on. Yeah there is, Oh yeah,
there's all kinds of fraud, and that's I think most
of what gets investigated in agricultural investigations, Like I think
it's mostly fraud related of one kind or another, so
broad category obviously, um hoof Yeah. Yeah. There were a

(33:06):
lot of really fascinating and beautifully written articles about about
some of these things that I was like, oh, it's
not about are they going to get to stealing? Okay,
but another episode push it aside. Not enough time, not
enough time, and probably we could we'll come back and
revisit this. If we've had if we left any out
let us know. Yeah, if you have, if you have

(33:28):
a favorite one, let's right right in. For sure, you're
more of our gas at these ridiculously high numbers. Um.
But yeah, So that that's what we have to say
about food heists today. UM. And we do have some
listener mail for you, but first we've got one more
quick break for which from our sponsor. And we're back.

(33:55):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, we're back with I
wanted to think about high I we think of like
high speed car chases, which is a category of film
I'm not very familiar with. But I have seen the
chase because it's on my my list of fifty good
bad movies to watch. Agreed, very fair assessment. Whoever put

(34:16):
it on that list. Anyway, Tom wrote, I've been listening
since the dawn of food stuff R I P. And
I've been mean to write in for some time, but
it's frowned upon to send emails while driving. I'm sorry
if this email gets a little long, but I couldn't
help but write after your latest episode. My maternal grandmother,
Maymare passed away in twelve but my grandfather, Jagu, continued

(34:38):
to live in their retro suburban early eighties condo up
until his passing in November. My family and I were
recently cleaning out the condo, and I, being a chef
by trade, decided to tackle the kitchen. After emptying the
fridge and clearing the counters, I began to sort through
the cabinets. Neither of my grandparents were cooks, both relying
heavily on the semi homemade food model that was so

(35:00):
popular with people their age, so the culinary supplies were
pretty basic in addition to being well aged. As I
emptied the spice shelf, I found a handful of bay
leaves scattered underneath the other spices. Odd but understandable. Had
a single nine year old man would missus Bill Jar
over the years. As I worked through all of the cabinets,
I continued to find Bai leaves scattered everywhere. Not a

(35:24):
single cabinet was free of them. I bought this to
my mom's attention, and she explained that the loose leaves
had been one of Maymyre's housekeeping tricks to keep sugar
ants at bay. Google has confirmed this as a home remedy,
but most sources suggest bundling the leaves together or throwing
them in a sashet. Finding the bay leaves brought both
my mom and I had to tears, happy to have

(35:44):
found a trace of maymare and an otherwise somber task.
Oh yeah, that's very sweet. It is it is. That
is something I had not heard. Yeah, me neither. A
lot of people wrote in about bay leaves. You'll be
hearing some more listener mail about failures. I love it.
I love that we have these personal stories. Yeah, thank
you so much for sharing. Um Kirk wrote, loved the

(36:07):
s cargo episode, but you missed a location where snails
are eaten. I grew up in Newfoundland and as a
child my family often ate sea snail. We called them whelks.
My cousin and I would be sent out at low
tide to collect sea snails and muscles. We'd boil them
in sea water with seaweed. Once cooked, they would be
drained and served in their shells, and we would sit
around the bowl of snails and fish them out of
their shells with a hatpin and dip them in drawn butter,

(36:29):
lemon juice, and wine vinegar. The best part was the
rhythm the kids would recite as we worked the snail
from the shell, the following snail, snail, come out of
your shell. Your mother and father are burning in hell,
we would laugh and scarve them down. I love that dark,

(36:50):
goth af and really charming. Love it burning in hell
well also sounds delicious. Yeah, you gotta have a fun
song saying while you're getting the snail you do clearly, clearly.

(37:10):
Thank you to both of them for writing. If you
would like to drive to us, you can. Our email
is hello at savor pod dot com. We're also in
social media. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter,
where our handle is at savor pod. We do hope
to hear from you. Savor is production of I Heart
Radio and Stuff Media. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
you can visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

(37:33):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as
always to our super producers Dylan Vaked and Andrew Howard.
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way.