A New York man is accused of stealing 33,750 pounds of frozen snow crab worth USD 325,000 (EUR 274,937) from a Worchester, Massachusetts, U.S.A. warehouse as part of a multi-state cargo scheme, according to the Boston Globe.
Romoy Forbes, 31, was charged with interstate transportation of stolen goods and conspiracy to commit that offense, U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said in a statement.
According to the charging documents, on 15 July 2025, Forbes and a co-conspirator allegedly hacked into the email account of a trucking carrier company to contact a shipping carrier to organize a sale of goods to Jacksonville, Florida, U.S.A. Once set up, Forbes allegedly infiltrated the warehouse in Worcester to steal the goods himself.
“Instead of delivering the seafood to the customer in Florida, Forbes allegedly transported it to the location of a grocery store business in Queens, New York, where Forbes took a picture of the pallets of packaged crabs with his cell phone,” the release said.
The same process occurred with a blueberry shipment weeks earlier on 25 June 2025, when Forbes allegedly intercepted a shipment of blueberries in Winslow Junction, New Jersey, U.S.A., headed to Illinois. Instead of delivering the goods, Forbes stole the fruit and sold it to his own customer. The same process happened a third time for designer cologne, when Forbes intercepted the delivery in Ronkonkama, New York, that was headed for Los Angeles, California.
Besides the charges for interstate transportation of stolen goods and conspiracy to commit that offense, Forbes was charged for conspiring to infiltrate email accounts of legitimate truck-load carriers and used the hacked accounts to book cargo with shippers and sell the items for illicit profit, the Massachusetts Department of Justice (DOJ) said.
Massachussets DOJ reported that if found guilty, the charge of interstate transportation of stolen goods provides for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to USD 250,000 (EUR 211,477). The charge of conspiracy to commit that offense carries a sentence of up to five years in prison and the same supervised release and monetary fine.
