How did a truckload of Nike shoes en route to Dallas, before being boosted in Memphis, Tennessee, end up in Des Plaines?
The Cook County Sheriff’s Organized Retail Crime Unit is working to figure that out, after its investigators tracked the stolen footwear — nearly $650,000 worth, in all — to a cargo distribution facility in the 1300 block of South Mount Prospect Road.
“Those stolen items were going somewhere, and it’s up to us to determine where,” Cmdr. Michael Ware, who leads the unit, told us in a phone interview Wednesday.
The heist, according to Ware, is an example of the high-tech methods organized criminals are now using to pull off major thefts. While old-fashioned “fell-off-a-truck” thefts still happen, crime rings have gotten far more sophisticated.
More Top Picks Best Standing Desks For Adhd Adults
This theft occurred Aug. 21, when someone showed up at Nike’s logistics facility in Memphis with fake documents to claim a truck trailer filled with shoes, the sheriff’s office said.
Criminal organizations will hack into transport companies’ computer systems to get information about upcoming shipments, then create realistic-looking counterfeit documents to claim them — something Ware labeled “cloning the load.”
Nike representatives learned two days later that the shipment had been picked up with bogus documents and, instead of heading to Dallas as intended, driven to the Chicago area.
Tipped off about the theft and using GPS tracking information that placed the truck in the area, Ware said sheriff’s investigators located it in Des Plaines and recovered the missing merchandise.
If they hadn’t? Ware said stolen items like these wind up in the hands of fencing operations, which sell them via online retailers like Amazon, marketplaces like Facebook, auction sites like eBay, or even in brick-and-mortar stores.
An investigation into who was behind the theft is ongoing, Ware said.