The road to Flavortown can be dangerous!
World famous chef Guy Fieri revealed in a new interview that savvy criminals carrying out a complex shipping scheme were behind the brazen heist of $1 million worth of tequila that he co-owns with former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar.
The goateed gourmand detailed last November’s high-proof highway robbery of 24,000 bottles of booze to CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and said he was eventually able to get some of the stolen party fuel back on the shelves.
“Oh, it hurt. It hurt bad,” the Food Network superstar said in the interview that aired Sunday.
Two truckloads of his Santo Tequila — including one special small batch that took two years to produce — disappeared while on the road from western Mexico to Pennsylvania.
When Fieri found out that haulers had been hijacked, he didn’t think of a discreet theft carried out by complex crooks but instead of a classic strong-arm robbery depicted in many movies.
“All my mind goes to is ‘Goodfellas,’” the “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” host said, referring to the classic mafia flick.
“That’s what I’m thinking is happening. And [the company’s president] said ‘No, no, no, no the trucks, they were appropriated but we don’t know where they are,’” Fieri recounted.
“I’m like, it’s not a needle in a haystack. I mean, this is a semi-tractor truck,” said Fieri. “My mind is swimming in exactly how do you lose, you know, that many thousands of bottles of tequila.”
The champion of the common chef later learned that Santo Tequila fell prey to international criminals who orchestrated a complex shell-game scheme, according to CBS News.
Dan Butkus, CEO of Santo Spirits, told the outlet that the company hired a trucking contractor, who in turn hired two subcontractors, to haul the shipments from Guadalajara, Mexico, through Laredo, Texas, and to Lansdale, Penn.
Those subcontractors turned out to be fake — complete with phony letterheads, email addresses, and phone numbers — CBS News reported.
The tequila stealers were even sophisticated enough to “spoof” GPS signals from the tractor trailers which made it appear that they were approaching their destination, when in reality they were completely off the map.
Santo hired a private investigator who detailed the case on “60 Minutes.”
“Instead of taking it to the destination that was on the bill of lading, they told [the drivers] to take that load to Los Angeles,” former cop and head of Verisk CaroNet Keith Lewis, told the outlet.
“The driver that picked it up has no idea that he’s committing a crime,” said Lewis.
Members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Cargo Theft Unit were able to find one of those truckloads of Santo Tequila roughly three weeks after the theft — recovering 11,000 bottles of the prized spirits.
types of complex schemes. Getty Images
Fieri said that some of those bottles were still able to be sold after passing appropriate inspections.
However, the siphoning scheme left Fieri with a major financial hangover and in the unfamiliar position of needing to tighten his belt.
“You know here we are, we’re coming right into the fourth quarter. We lose all the tequila. We can’t fill the shelves. We had to lay off players. And that’s the hardest thing,” the American gastronome said.
“It’s not a thing I wanna go and brag about, like, ‘Hey, we got ripped off,’” the “Guy’s Grocery Games” creator said, adding, “You know, that’s not fun.”
“But if it can happen to us with what I believe were pretty strong measures and security and awareness and, you know, communication and, you know, the way we do business. And to get ripped off for two full semitruck loads of tequila in today’s age, then everybody’s vulnerable.”
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