It’s like the logline for a Hollywood action movie: Deep in the Mojave desert, a team of outlaws boards a freight train and then pulls off a daring heist, making off with millions of dollars worth of limited-edition sneakers.
Well, maybe not the last part.
But reality is sometimes weirder than fiction, and that’s the case with the recent story about train robberies in the Southwest. On February 23, the Los Angeles Times published a detailed report about ten train heists that occurred between March 2024 and January 2025 in California and Arizona. Thieves boarded freight trains operated by BNSF Railways, cut open the locks to shipping containers, and then tossed cargo off the side, where follow vehicles scooped up the loot.
In all but one of the incidents, the criminals stole limited-edition Nike sneakers, and the combined value of the thefts totaled approximately $2 million. During one heist, which occurred on January 13, the crew took 1,985 pairs of unreleased shoes, the Nigel Sylvester x Air Jordan 4, which sneaker website HypeBeast described as “much-anticipated.”
Lawmen eventually caught up with the alleged bad guys. According to the LA Times story, federal agents executed search warrants, raided storage units, and even chased the crooks along dusty dirt roads. USA Today reported that at more than 60 individuals face federal charges related to the train heists. In one heist, on January 15, authorities chased down the culprits and found that they were both teenagers. According to the LA Times, 11 people were arrested after the January 13 heist. The alleged criminals were indicted on February 15 and are now awaiting trial.
This whole ordeal may sounds familiar. Back in October, Outside published Scott Yorko’s investigative story The Great Bedrock Clog Heist about the 2023 theft of 5,364 pairs of shoes from outdoor brand Bedrock Sandals. During that heist, robbers stole the truck carrying a new shipment of unreleased shoes and then attempted to sell them online.
Yorko’s piece, and the recent LA Times story, both shine a light on the vulnerability of America’s freight transportation industry, which is how our favorite outdoor gear makes its way from factory to retail. It turns out that the items that we all love—yes, including our favorite footwear—are routinely being stolen from trucks and trains and then sold on the black market. The Times referenced a report from the Association of American Railroads, a trade group representing freight train companies, stating that 65,000 railroad cargo thefts occurred in the U.S. in 2024, up 40 percent from 2023. Verisk CargoNet, a data analytics company that also monitors cargo theft, estimates that the number of cargo thefts in 2023 was up 59 percent from 2022.
“Everyone in this space has said it’s the worst it’s ever been in their entire 40-to-50-year careers,” Jimmy Menges, national director at Marine Intelligence and Solutions, a private investigation firm, said in the Outside story. “There used to be a lot more dedicated cargo-theft task forces in the FBI and local law enforcement, but they’ve been disbanded.”
I recently phoned up two experts in the world of cargo theft to discuss the LA Times story: Keith Lewis, the vice president of operations for Verisk CargoNet, and Glenn Master, the director of asset protection and security for trucking company McLane. Both men have worked in the business of cargo protection—and investigating cargo heists—for several decades. They shared their thoughts the differences between the Bedrock Sandals and Nike heists, how companies attempt to recoup their lost goods, and how theft like these impact customers like you and me.
A Train Heist Is Different than a Truck Heist
Two years after the Bedrock Sandals heist, there’s still a lingering debate amongst employees and security experts as to whether the specialty shoes were targeted by the thieves, or whether the bad guys simply stole a truck and lucked into the loot.
But my security experts both agree that in the case of the stolen Nikes, the crooks knew what they wanted. Both Master and Lewis said that, based on the details released to the public by law enforcement, the train thieves were not just breaking into containers at random.
Cargo trains are sometimes a mile or two long, and they can carry hundreds of metal shipping containers, all loaded with different products. But the thieves stole high-dollar Nike sneakers in nine of the ten heists.
“That’s not a coincidence,” Lewis said. “And there are probably a dozen different ways to find out where it’s loaded on the train.”
Lewis said that cargo thieves can learn about the placement of products on a train through savvy online research. Or sometimes, they pay off people working at warehouses or with shipping companies to pass along information about where specific cargo is located. I reached out to BNSF Railway about this, and the company sent me the following statement:
“BNSF has robust security protocols, and our police department is focused on preventing these incidents on our network. We work hard to protect our customers’ freight from pickup to delivery and have security measures in place to help ensure these goods arrive safely. We are working with federal, state, local, and tribal police departments to coordinate our approach to disrupting criminal activity and arresting offenders.”
Once thieves know the location of cargo, they board the train when it’s stopped. Due to the size of freight trains, security guards can’t patrol the entire vehicle, Lewis said. And train drivers are unarmed. Once crooks find the shipping containers, they cut the locks off with grinders or bolt cutters. Then, they toss the cargo to the ground, hide it in the underbrush, and wait for a follow car to pick it up.
“This isn’t a situation where the train is going 50 miles per hour,” Master told me. “If you have 10 to 15 people walking along the train with bolt cutters to just cut the latch and start unloading a container, it becomes a numbers game. If you have 30 minutes, you can start searching containers until you find the Nike shoes.”
Big Companies Can Investigate on Their Own
The 2023 clog heist had a major impact on Bedrock Sandals. The Montana-based company had just nine employees when the theft occurred. The new clogs were a hot item, and when the truck was stolen, Bedrock Sandals was unable to immediately fulfill orders for them. The company had to wait several months for the next shipment to arrive.
The company’s director of operations, Matt McAdow, had to deal with the misfortune himself: he texted with a suspect asking to have the cargo returned, and also contacted law enforcement and insurance once it was clear that the sandals weren’t coming back. When the stolen clogs began appearing on eBay and other online resellers, McAdow had to reach out directly, asking them to remove the merchandise.
Lewis has seen this situation play out before. “At a mom-and-pop company, you’re waiting by the phone for a miracle to happen,” Lewis said. “At a big company, they know that a miracle isn’t going to happen unless they’re part of it.”
Master and Lewis told me the process is far different at a major international company. Big manufacturers regularly deal with theft, and many employ their own security experts who work to prevent robberies and investigate crimes after they happen.
“Big companies may have their own investigations unit—after a caper like this they are going to do the heavy lifting from an investigation standpoint to find the bad guys and see who did what,” he said. “Sometimes they can bring the investigation to law enforcement in a white box with a bow on top.”
I reached out to a Nike spokesperson for this story multiple times but did not get a response. According to The LA Times report and a piece by Phoenix CBS 5 News, the train heists in California and Arizona were foiled by a combination of federal and local police working alongside BNSF security. Authorities hid GPS trackers in the Nike shoes and used the devices to locate a box truck carrying the stolen cargo.
Master said that corporate investigation units have become increasingly important as law enforcement units across the country have shrunk in the post-COVID years. These days, most detectives have enormous case loads, which delay investigations around theft. Corporate investigators can help an investigation move along quickly, even when law enforcement is bogged down.
Master said that McLane’s security unit recently had to investigate a string of cigarette heists. The robberies took place in multiple different municipalities, he said, and the different law enforcement offices struggled with a lack of jurisdictional communication.
“It took us working with these other companies’ security departments to come up with a plan to put GPS trackers in boxes,” he said. “After a year we were able to go to the state police and say ‘here is your investigation’ and they got the warrants to arrest people.”
Where the Stolen Goods End Up
Despite the differences in the heists, Master and Lewis agreed that the stolen cargo was likely headed to the same place: offshore marketplaces.
“When you’re dealing with local thieves doing smash-and-grab jobs, you’ll find the stuff in bodegas and at swap meets, but that’s more general product,” Master said. “When the product is targeted, like the latest iPhones or shoes, a lot of times they already have a buyer overseas.”
Thieves are usually hired by a middle man—a person called a “fence”—who then negotiates a price with the offshore buyer, Master said. Once on foreign soil, the shoes are then sold through the black market to customers around the world.
Stolen cargo in the United States is first sent to port cities where it sits in warehouses awaiting transport overseas in shipping containers. If investigators can get to it before it’s packed, it can be salvaged.
“The moment the stuff gets put into the cargo container, it’s gone forever,” Master said. “The probability of recovery becomes extremely limited.”
Both Bedrock Sandals and Nike were able to save some inventory before it went overseas. Investigators eventually located the remaining Bedrock Sandals clogs in a warehouse in Los Angeles. In the case of the stolen Nikes, investigators raided several private residences and storage units and found hundreds of pairs of shoes.
How to Avoid Theft
Is there any end in sight to the problem of cargo theft in the United States? Both Master and Lewis expressed doubts. America’s supply chain for retail goods has too many weak points, they said, and crooks will always find ways to break in.
Plus, cost-cutting innovations and the subcontracting out of various jobs within the supply chain means that manufacturers don’t always know who is in charge of their product at various points in the journey from factory to retail location.
“Companies just hand it off to the supply chain and it’s someone else’s problem now,” Master said. “You hope the stuff gets there, and if they’re missing a palette, they know they will be made whole by insurance.”
Companies can pay for added security in the form of armed guards, heavy-duty locks, and specialty transport. But this infrastructure is expensive, and it often slows down the speed at which goods reach their final destination. Most companies, Lewis said, are willing to take the risk.
“If you’re shipping a few million bucks worth of goods it probably makes sense to send it with surface escorts for safety,” Lewis said. “But everything adds cost and slows down the supply chain. People want to move freight at the speed of light.”
Manufacturers pay insurance companies to help defer costs in the case of break-ins and theft. But these crimes are far from victimless. Lewis said the mounting costs of insurance, security measures, and internal investigators all ends up being paid by one group.
“It’s the customer,” he said. “That’s the real victim.”
The post Experts Break Down the $2 Million Nike Train Heists appeared first on Outside Online.
