Criminals are always looking for ways to make it rich, quick. Some have learned to skip private consumers and go straight to the source, like the thieves hitting up Tesla’s Gigafactory Nevada facility to steal batteries straight from the source, Wired reports.
It’s called cargo theft, and the crime has more than doubled in occurrences since 2022, and according to a recent report from the American Transportation Research Institute those thefts have cost the trucking industry as much as $6.6 billion a year, amounting to nearly $18 million per day. In the growing sub-scheme of cargo theft called “strategic theft” where an individual or group aim to find weak points in security and protocols at targeted companies. This approach might consist of presenting a fake ID or establishing some sort of connection with a legitimate trucking outlet that would be able to get a vehicle into the facility, pick up the cargo, and run off with it with little-to-no suspicion. And like the oil fields, these thefts are more easily done, successfully, in remote areas much like the Gigafactory is located. Once cargo is obtained from somewhere like Tesla, it’s a race to sell off the batteries or their precious elements before anyone figures out or discovers they’re stolen.
What do you do with a bunch of stolen Tesla batteries?
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One instance involving Tesla’s Nevada factory, the company and authorities were alerted to a suspicious unnamed party that had attempted to offer Tesla car batteries to a Northern California auto parts store at a discount. Those batteries were later confirmed as stolen. Detectives have attempted to follow GPS signals equipped on the cargo vehicles, or place GPS trackers on abandoned ones in hope to capture thieves in the act as they return for their stolen cargo.
Tesla’s kept rather mum about the situation while its Nevada facility has fallen victim to at least 11 thefts in the last six months for both its car batteries and Powerwalls (its residential battery systems). One heist captured $475,000 worth of Powerwall 3s in one go. Detective Sam Hatley of Storey County Sheriff’s Office told Wired that investigators are currently looking into at least 17 alleged cargo thefts from the last year, but would not disclose how many were specifically related to Tesla, or a battery recycling facility that was also targeted, Redwood Materials.
The electric automaker has reportedly put in better security protocols at its gates, including verifying driver identities, which has helped tamper theft frequency. But grifters are gonna grift, and Tesla has been unsuccessful at completely eradicating the issue.