I was talking to a guy who worked in logistics. He said “vanishing” was a common problem for high dollar items. He had recently had a shipment of Xboxes, the driver had specifically been told, “Do not stop, keep driving, make the assigned times”. Of course, the driver went off book, went somewhere else, and when he got back to the truck, magically a bunch of the order was missing. Guy was convinced the driver was on the take and would tip off someone about the juicy hauls.

While probably harder to find a no-questions asked buyer, the price premium on GPUs is a lot higher than some consoles.

It happens all the time. I work in logistics, it's unbelievable how much general criminality and fraud there is in this industry.

The scenario you outlined is not all that common. There are much more sophisticated scams. What I see the most often are disclosures of load information and pickup numbers to bad actors (e.g. via social engineering).

When you roll up to a facility with a truck, you need to provide information from the bill of lading, and the key piece of data is the pickup number, which is basically like a PIN for the shipment. If that gets into the wrong hands, then someone else can show up at that facility, pose as the carrier, and get loaded with the goods. It's quite low risk during the operation because there's no hijacking or anything else obviously criminal happening. People will literally load the thief's truck.

> While probably harder to find a no-questions asked buyer, the price premium on GPUs is a lot higher than some consoles.

I'd go further than that. A no-questions-asked buyer for a console merely suspects there's shenanigans afoot, and will expect a considerable discount off the sticker price. A no-questions-asked buyer for server GPUs almost certainly knows for a fact there's shenanigans afoot, but is likely to pay a premium over the sticker price anyway.

This type of thing is where a lot of prescription drugs that hit the black market come from.

The manufacturers of drugs are highly regulated.

The prescribers of drugs are highly regulated.

The disbursers of prescription drugs are highly regulated.

The shippers; not so much.

There's a good reason the mob likes logistics companies.

My wife worked for a woman's health and beauty company that sold a lot of perfume and cologne, and their trucks would get ripped off all the time.

Wouldn't at least some shipping companies have the technology to track their trucks pretty closely nowadays?

Are there not commercial equivalent of AirTags that can be hidden into pallets to track things?

> Guy was convinced the driver was on the take and would tip off someone about the juicy hauls.

Most logistics companies operate on shoestring IT budgets, and yet their software systems are juicy targets for organized crime, just like real estate companies.

This was a central plot point in The Fast and the Furious (2001)

Yeah, I would guess the driver is one who tips them off. Goes to some plausible location, gets out and takes a long enough lunch or bathroom break and then bam! “Omg someone stole this while I wasn’t looking”.

> probably harder to find a no-questions asked buyer

Is it ? with all the news this week about dummy servers and other tricks to bypass export controls, it seems there would be many no questions asked buyers abroad.

Heh, a play straight out of the movie Goodfellas

Am reminded of the premise of the first The Fast & Furious movie.

Can xboxes still play games without connecting to the internet?

I knew a UPS logistics guy, who told me (20 years ago) that an entire 30+ foot UPS trailer full of brand new laptops simply disappeared from a warehouse.