Transit Heists Have Taken More Than $100 Million in Computing Gear

By Nathan Brooks

More than $100 million in computing equipment and related gear has been stolen through transit interception since June 2026, according to an NBC report cited by Tom’s Hardware. The account says such theft has grown over the past two years, with individual shipments carrying tens of millions of dollars in equipment.

How large is the theft problem?

The source frames the threat as reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars, but its concrete NBC figure is the $100 million-plus total. The source gives no recovery figures, so the theft valuations cannot be treated as a count of permanently lost equipment.

A $38 million data center gear disappearance in Reno in 2026 anchors the recent cases. Fortune separately reported that thieves took $15 million in semiconductors and Apple products from the same city in July 2025.

June 2026 produced two other large incidents. About $13 million in equipment vanished around the Mojave Desert, while $10 million in server-rack components headed for Texas disappeared during the same month. The source provides no recovery figures for these losses.

What can thieves take?

The reported inventory extends well beyond processors:

• Servers
• Fiber-optic and copper cabling
• RAM modules
• Drives
• Routers
• Miscellaneous data center equipment

The source calls the perpetrators “grand-theft-GPU thieves” in its framing, although NBC does not identify GPUs among the specific stolen products. It says servers bound for AI buildouts probably contain some, making that an industry inference rather than a documented GPU inventory.

One stolen trailer carried copper worth $300,000. Keith Lewis of Verisk Cargonet said: “It’s like stealing pure gold bars […] it’s so much easier to steal [data center shipments] than to rob a bank.”

How do the transit hijackings work?\n

Hacking and phishing give criminals access to online accounts belonging to freight brokers and carriers. Once inside, they can read cargo manifests and shipping schedules, impersonate shipping companies, track a real load, create a false one, and arrange collection of the truck.

The operation can combine digital intrusion with physical force. In a few recent cases, thieves rammed escort cars, allowing the truck to drive away. The source presents driver complicity as likely, then links recruitment of drivers to AI-generated identity documents and weak personnel vetting; those points remain probable explanations rather than confirmed findings.

GPS tracking offers little comfort when the tracker can be copied. In one case, thieves used GPS beacon impersonation and broadcast false coordinates, keeping both people and automated systems unaware that the shipment had been diverted.

Where does the stolen equipment go?

The simplest second-hand resale story does not fit. Buyers outside the United States are reportedly ready before a theft occurs, reducing the need to move unwanted equipment through ordinary resale channels. Law-enforcement officials believe the gear reaches entities in countries subject to tight U.S. AI export controls, including China.

That channel puts diverted servers into markets where export rules can restrict supply, rather than necessarily delivering them to the data center projects that ordered them. The source identifies no stolen models, GPU product codes or buyers, so the scale of restricted AI hardware diversion remains uncertain.

Verified Carrier, a platform for vetting carriers, reported suspicious activity this year linked with U.S. cargo theft in India, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Colombia and Moldova. Scott Cornell of TAPA Americas estimates that six to seven of every ten stolen cargo shipments, data center equipment or otherwise, end overseas.

David Warrick of supply-management firm Overhaul said: “These are international syndicates. They run like big corporations…They have penetrated the supply chains at all levels, in terms of drivers, in terms of warehouse operators.”

He added: “They know where all the high-value goods are; they know who transacts them, and they look for the weak points in the supply chain to be able to exploit those.” The description shifts the problem from opportunistic theft to organized control of logistics weak points.

What can carriers and brokers improve?

The cases expose four operational failures: compromised broker accounts, weak driver vetting, spoofed tracking and protection that failed during transit. Verified Carrier reports suspicious activity, and some hijacked loads had escort cars, yet thieves could combine stolen credentials, suspected insiders and false location data.

That combination is the commercial problem. Buyers may pay more for verified delivery as hardware diversion becomes a channel around export controls, while thieves compete for high-value server components. If brokers, carriers and law enforcement leave the account, vetting and tracking gaps open, diverted hardware should keep feeding overseas buyers and reinforce a premium for AI-server shipments with verified custody.