$725 Million in Freight Vanished in 2025. Congress Sent $4 Million After It.

On April 30, 2026, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center published Public Service Announcement I-043026-PSA, warning the transportation industry of "cyber-enabled strategic cargo theft" — criminals who hijack a broker's or carrier's computer systems, then use that access to steal entire truckloads of freight without ever touching a lock.▸ The PSA cited a number from a private analytics firm: estimated cargo theft losses across the U.S. and Canada reached nearly $725 million in 2025, according to Verisk CargoNet's annual analysis — a 60% jump from 2024, even though the total count of supply-chain crime events barely moved. Three weeks earlier, the House Appropriations Committee had approved the government's first dedicated line item aimed at the problem: $4 million.

The scheme the FBI described runs in four stages.▸ First, criminals compromise a broker's or carrier's email and load-board accounts, usually through spoofed domains and phishing links that install remote-access software. Second, using that stolen access, they "post fake loads online," sometimes "in the tens of thousands," to bait real carriers. Third, posing as a compromised carrier, they "accept shipments and double-broker the load to partially unwitting drivers" — rewriting bills of lading and destinations, and updating the real carrier's federal registration so the fraud isn't caught. Finally, the freight is "cross-docked or transloaded to complicit drivers, who redirect the cargo" for resale, per the IC3 announcement. None of it requires breaking into a trailer.

That shift toward fraud over force shows up in the numbers.▸ CargoNet recorded 3,594 total supply-chain crime events in 2025, essentially flat against 3,607 in 2024 — but confirmed cargo theft incidents rose 18%, from 2,243 to 2,646, and the average value stolen per theft jumped 36%, to $273,990. "Criminal enterprises are becoming more selective and sophisticated, targeting extremely high value shipments rather than relying on opportunistic theft," said Keith Lewis, Verisk CargoNet's vice president of operations, in the company's release. "This strategic shift explains how losses can rise 60 percent even as overall incident volume holds steady." Food and beverage shipments were the fastest-growing target, with 708 thefts in 2025 — up 47% — while metal theft, driven by copper demand, rose 77%.

Three weeks before the FBI's warning, the House Appropriations Committee had already moved.▸ Its report on the fiscal year 2027 Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies bill — H.R. 8845, approved May 15, 2026 — directs the Justice Department to brief Congress within 120 days on establishing regional task forces, led by the FBI and run jointly with Homeland Security Investigations, the TSA, and the Department of Transportation, "to investigate and refer related cases for prosecution." The committee's report language commits "$2,000,000 to support the establishment of these task forces", plus a further "no less than $2,000,000" directed to U.S. Attorneys' Offices with the highest cargo-theft caseloads, so each can assign "at least one additional attorney to cargo theft prosecutions." Total: $4 million, against $725 million lost the year before.

The trucking industry's own trade group had been pushing for both this appropriation and a companion bill, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, for over a year.▸ "As the transportation mode entrusted with moving nearly three-quarters of the nation's freight, trucking has become a top target for organized crime rings, including transnational organizations," American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear said when that bill cleared committee in January 2026. "These brazen criminals rob our industry of millions of dollars every day, raising costs for consumers and putting truck drivers at risk in the process."

Cargo theft doesn't land evenly.▸ The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's registration data — queried directly from its Motor Carrier Census on July 10, 2026 — shows that of the 1,054,183 authorized for-hire carriers currently operating at least one truck, 1,006,821, or 95.5%, run ten trucks or fewer. These are the operators with the thinnest margins and the least capacity to absorb a six-figure loss when a load board scam routes a truckload of freight to a stranger instead of its buyer.

Only 2,384 carriers nationwide — 0.2% of the total — run fleets of 201 trucks or more.▸ The freight economy that criminals are increasingly targeting with fraud instead of force is, mechanically, an economy of very small businesses.

Loss figures are Verisk CargoNet's estimates for calendar year 2025 across the U.S. and Canada; the $4 million appropriation figure is this article's sum of two amounts specified separately in H. Rept. 119-652 ($2,000,000 for task forces, "no less than $2,000,000" for prosecutors), not a single sum stated in the report. Carrier fleet-size figures are this article's own tabulation of FMCSA's live registration database as queried on July 10, 2026, and will shift as carriers register, deregister, or update their fleet size.