Lobsters to tequila: Cargo theft is eating America’s lunch and driving up food prices

As families across the country were preparing to celebrate Christmas, criminals were busy playing the Grinch. On Christmas Eve, a $400,000 shipment of live lobsters headed to Costco warehouses in Illinois and Minnesota vanished after pickup in Massachusetts. Posing as a legitimate trucking company, thieves disabled the truck’s GPS and disappeared with the load, a calculated act of cargo theft now under investigation by the FBI.

As brazen as it sounds, this was no one-off heist. Thieves recently made off with two truckloads carrying 24...