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More than 24,000 bottles of Tequila missing after trucks hijacked
Two Santo Spirits freight trucks loaded with goods were stolen on 9 November in a theft amounting to US$1 million – and the drinks company is offering a reward for information.
Two trucks containing 440 cases, or 24,240 bottles, of Tequila, including Santo Blanco, Reposado and Extra Añejo styles, were stolen in Texas on the weekend of 9 November.
According to Santo Spirits co-owner Guy Fieri the trucks were “double brokered” to different carriers who transferred the product to their trucks after the bottles crossed over the Mexican border into Laredo, Texas. Calling the crime “an organised effort” he is offering a US$10,000 reward to anyone who finds the missing trucks, the value of its contents being about $1 million.
“We’ve worked so hard,” Fieri told People magazine. “This is our best year we’ve ever had in Santo. We just had all this momentum, and now whatever’s on the shelf is all people are going to get.”
“My sales team, my marketing team, the entire Santo Spirits team is dependent upon these sales… That’s sort of the piece that’s most hurtful to me. We’ve got to support these people both at the distillery and in the US, and we can’t do it right now without the revenue from these cases.”
Fieri revealed that Santo’s distillery is working around the clock to replenish the missing bottles, but that despite their efforts there is likely to be a shortage of Santo Tequila over the festive period.
Red flags
Santo Spirits’ trucking partner Johanson noticed “red flags” after neither truck arrived at their planned destinations of California and Pennsylvania.
“We believe the GPS tracking signal we were monitoring was spoofed by a GPS emulator application used by the criminals,” the trucker stated in an independent report.
Fieri said: “It’s like a movie — I never in a million years thought this was coming down the pike like this, but it’s real.”
The Laredo Police Department is now investigating the theft but Santo president Dan Butkus is not hopeful the trucks will be recovered. “It’s unlikely that they’ll find these truckers. They probably rent the truck, get the bid, get the cargo, sell it, and then disappear,” he said. “There are some phone lines we have from them that are already disconnected.”
Santo Tequila is a premium, additive-free Tequila crafted from 100% Blue Weber agave and produced at the historic El Viejito Distillery.
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