A Crustacean Case For The FBI: $400k Worth Of Lobsters Hijacked En Route To Costco

Midwest readers, take note: If lobster was on your menu this holiday season, you may have to pivot. A shipment of live lobsters worth $400,000 was hijacked while en route to Costco locations in Illinois and Minnesota. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is looking into the theft, which is believed to be the work of an organized criminal ring targeting high-end products. Lobster carries a high cost due to industry complications, supply limitations, inflation, and other factors — current market prices for lobster vary between $17 and $47 per pound (via Selina Wamucii).

According to Dylan Rexing, CEO of the Indiana-based logistics and supply chain management entity Rexing Companies, the shipment left its origin point in Taunton, Massachusetts, but never made its way to the Midwestern Costcos. At the time of writing, no arrests have been made by the FBI, but Rexing told Fox 32 Chicago that a similar theft of seafood took place at the same Massachusetts facility earlier in December 2025. "This theft wasn't random," Rexing said (via Fox Business). "It followed a pattern we're seeing more and more, where criminals impersonate legitimate carriers using spoofed emails and burner phones to hijack high-value freight while it's in transit."

Though it may be tempting to regard stolen lobsters as a "lighter side of the news" item (just the term "lobster theft" has a certain quirkiness to it), the loss of high-value cargo like seafood is a serious problem, not only for retailers and shipping entities like the Rexing Companies but also for the consumer, who ultimately has to shoulder that loss through higher prices when buying lobster. "For a mid-sized brokerage like ours, a $400,000 loss is significant," said CEO Dylan Rexing (via Fox Business). "It forces tough decisions and ultimately drives up costs across the supply chain — costs consumers ultimately end up paying."  

The Costco-related theft isn't even the highest toll suffered for stolen seafood recently: In 2019, delivery driver was allegedly linked to the theft of 20 pallets of lobster tails that carried a whopping price tag of $650,000. Even that incident pales beside one of the most expensive (and recurring) food-related crimes: cooking oil thefts. The used oil or grease can be repurposed for biodiesel or animal feed, and it carries an estimated value of $300 to $500 million in lost revenue, according to the North American Renderers Association.

Rexing said that federal agencies are needed to combat cargo theft, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) — a law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security — has taken steps to address the problem. In 2025, it launched Operation Boiling Point, which sought to root out organized theft groups profiting from the resale of stolen retail goods, including what the agency labeled as "groceries." A press release by HSI claimed that federal and state governments miss out on about $15 billion in tax revenue from stolen goods, which potentially places additional costs of $500 per year on consumers.