Food Network star and longtime Sonoma County resident Guy Fieri said the 2024 robbery of $1 million of his company’s tequila “really hurt.”
The famous chef talked about the devastating incident in an interview with “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi for a segment of the CBS News program that aired Sunday.
In November 2024, two truckloads of Santo Tequila – the brand founded in 2019 by Fieri and former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar – went missing some time after the shipment crossed the border from Mexico into Laredo, Texas.
All told, about 24,000 bottles of tequila are gone, according to company president and CEO Dan Butkus. told The Press Democrat last year.
On the way to Santo Tequila’s distribution center in Pennsylvania, the trucks were instead diverted by thieves posing as a trucking company.
“Oh, it hurt. It hurt a lot,” Fieri told Alfonsi about the robbery.
Fieri gave Alfonsi a rundown of the segment’s events and said his thoughts went to “Goodfellas” when he heard Butkus’ news.
“I’m like, it’s not a needle in a haystack. I mean, this is a semi-tractor,” Fieri said on the program. “My mind is on, how do you lose, you know, those many thousands of bottles of tequila?”
What happened was a case of “double brokering,” where the company that handled the shipments for Santo hired a transportation company. That transport company outsourced the job to two other companies. It turns out, “60 Minutes” reported, that these companies were fake – with fake letterheads, email addresses and phone numbers that appeared legitimate.
The ruse also included manipulated GPS data to make it appear as if the trucks were delayed but still headed to Pennsylvania.
Instead, the shipment of more than 4,000 cases of company stock, including 2,000 cases of Blanco and Reposado tequila, and 40 cases of a three-year-old Extra Anejo Single Barrel, was diverted to Los Angeles, where investigators found 11,000 bottles. a month later in a warehouse.
Fieri told 60 Minutes that the thieves and the second truck of tequila were never found.
The program also spoke with Keith Lewis, who runs operations for Verisk CargoNet, a company hired by Santo that works with law enforcement agencies to solve these types of crimes.
According to Lewis, these types of cases happen several times a day.
In the case of the missing Santo Tequila, Lewis told “60 Minutes” that the criminals had created fake trucking company profiles online, bid on jobs they suspected might be valuable and hired unsuspecting drivers online.
“The driver who picked him up has no idea he’s committing a crime,” Lewis said.
The program also traveled to Los Angeles, where Alfonsi City Police toured a warehouse full of stolen shipments recovered by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Cargo Theft Unit.
The LAPD told the program that stolen shipments are typically sold online or in stores to unsuspecting customers.
While Santo managed to put some of the recovered inventory back on the shelf, Fieri told “60 Minutes” the whole ordeal, which “made everything hurt” weeks before the holidays.
“You know we’re here, we’re coming right into the fourth quarter. We’re losing all the tequila. We can’t fill the shelves. We’ve had to lay off players. You know, and that’s the hardest part? Knowing how many people are counting on you.”
In an email to The Press Democrat on Tuesday, Butkus said the company was “disheartened to learn of the size and scope of cyber freight crime and its devastating impact on small businesses across the country.”
“Santo has taken significant steps to reduce the chance of this happening again. We encourage others to do the same. Hopefully, our coming forward to publicly discuss the story will lead to better prevention and fewer losses,” Butkus said.
Originally published:
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