ESCALON, Calif. (AP) — The soaring value of California’s
nut crops is attracting a new breed of thieves who have been making off
with the pricey commodities by the truckload, recalling images of cattle
rustlers of bygone days.
This harvest season in the Central
Valley, thieves cut through a fence and hauled off $400,000 in walnuts.
An additional $100,000 in almonds was stolen by a driver with a fake
license. And $100,000 in pistachios was taken by a big rig driver who
left a farm without filling out any paperwork.
Investigators
suspect low-level organized crime may have a hand in cases, while some
pilfered nuts are ending up in Los Angeles for resale at farmers markets
or disappear into the black market.
Domestic demand for specialty
foods and an expanding Asian market for them have prompted a nut
orchard boom in the state’s agricultural heartland. Such heists have
become so common that an industry taskforce recently formed to devise
ways to thwart thieves.
"The Wild West is alive and well in
certain aspects," said Danielle Oliver of the California Farm Bureau.
"There’s always someone out there trying to make a quick dollar on
somebody else’s hard work."
Amid the nut boom, farmers have torn
out vineyards and other crops to plant nut trees to keep up with demand.
Real estate firms, retirement funds and insurance companies have taken
note by adding almonds, walnut and pistachio land to diversify their
portfolios.
As the nation’s top nut producer, the state grows more
almonds and pistachios than any other country. Only China produces more
walnuts, which have nearly tripled in price in the last five years to
about $2 a pound, according to the California Walnut Board.
The
U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that through 2012 the state’s
almond crop was valued at $5 billion per year, pistachios were over $1
billion and walnuts were over $1.5 billion.
"Right now, everybody
wants to be a nut grower because it’s kind of like the gold rush of the
1850s," said Ripon almond farmer Kevin Fondse of Fondse Brothers Inc.
"Everybody wants the gold."
That frenzy has spawned crime. In a
brazen heist in October, thieves made off with 140,000 pounds of
processed walnuts from GoldRiver Orchards. The thief cut through wooden
fence posts in the dead of night, hooked up a truck to three gondola
trailers brimming with nuts and drove off.
In another incident,
unemployed trucker Francisco Javier Lopez Martinez told investigators he
couldn’t pass up a job paying $180, despite his suspicions. He was
hired in October by a man who gave him a fraudulent driver’s license and
told him to pick up 43,000 pounds of almonds at Sunnygem, a processing
plant.
A transportation broker tipped sheriff’s deputies that
something seemed amiss. They arrested Martinez, who told them he was
supposed to drive the load to a specified address in Los Angeles, park
it and walk away.
The trucking firm that hired him turned out to
be a fake. The company’s logo was merely taped onto the side of the
truck, and it had stolen license plates. Martinez pleaded guilty in
December to commercial burglary and possession of fake identification.
He was sentenced to 350 days in jail and three years of probation.
Authorities
say this type of industrial identity theft, known as a "fictitious
pickup," is becoming more sophisticated. It often involves con artists
providing fabricated insurance documents and U.S. Department of
Transportation numbers for trucks.
The driver presents the paperwork to the unsuspecting nut processor.
A
walnut farmer suspected he had fallen victim to such a crime in March
after a $250,000 load left his yard, so he called Detectives Pat McNelis
and Matt Calkins at the Butte County sheriff’s department. The
detectives traced phone records to Los Angeles, where police there
served search warrants and seized evidence. The investigation continues,
detectives said.
"In our case, there’s multiple levels of people
that were involved in a complex crime," Calkins said. "This is an
organized criminal enterprise. It’s not one or two people acting on
their own."
The California Highway Patrol investigates cargo
thefts, but doesn’t tally nut thefts separately. The CHP hasn’t
established a link between such thefts and any specific criminal
organization, spokeswoman Erin Komatsubara said.
Growers and nut
processors say they have been so hard hit in the past year that a
coalition of nut associations formed a taskforce in October to seek the
advice of law enforcement and to create an eight-step checklist for
growers and nut processors.
The list includes fingerprinting
drivers, taking their photos and calling the broker to confirm that the
paperwork is legitimate. Such common-sense steps can save hundreds of
thousands of dollars in vanishing cargo, said Carl Eidsath, a task force
member representing the California Walnut Board.
Too often,
Eidsath said, the theft isn’t detected until it’s too late. "The only
reason they knew something wasn’t right was when the load didn’t show up
at the customer," he said. "That’s days and days later."
Taking
additional safeguards, almond grower Michael Fondse, the fourth
generation at Fondse Brothers Inc. behind his father, Kevin Fondse, said
he planted a row of redwood trees along the road to create a visual
barrier, hiding his orchards from would-be thieves, and he installed
cameras at the processing plant.
"We’ve installed a lot of lights," he said. "That’s the No. 1 deterrent, keeping
everything bright."
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