Five Indicted in Major Rail Freight Theft Ring

Five men were indicted here Friday by a federal grand jury for their role in a large-scale theft scheme targeting railroad freight cars carrying costly cargo, including flat screen televisions.
The men were arrested shortly after midnight on June 25 near Ludlow, Calif., after several of them unloaded 45 flat-screen 3-D televisions valued at nearly $200,000 from an eastbound freight car that was parked temporarily on a railroad siding. The arrests capped a two-month investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Union Pacific Railroad Police, with assistance from the sheriff's departments in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railroad Police and the California Highway Patrol.
Grainy night-vision video shot by investigators at the scene just prior to the arrests shows three shadowy figures, allegedly including two of the defendants, removing large boxes from a rail car, then carrying them away from the tracks and hiding them in the brush. ICE HSI agents say the thieves would scout trains departing the Los Angeles area to identify those potentially carrying high-end cargo.
In a conversation described in the criminal complaint, one of the defendants tells a confidential informant how he and the others would travel to Barstow, where some members of the crew would hide in the rail cars. If their activities went undetected, the defendants would begin removing cargo from the cars. If the defendants suspected they were being watched, they would ride the train farther east seeking another opportunity.

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Credit: WorldTradeMag.com