Most cargo theft prevention advice is written for a truck stop robbery. That is not how the money is disappearing anymore. In 2025, confirmed cargo theft incidents rose 18% while their average value rose 36%, and the shift behind both numbers is the same: organised operators are increasingly stealing freight by getting it handed to them, not by taking it from someone.
That means the defence is a paperwork and verification discipline, not a padlock. It also means a forwarder or broker who dispatches carelessly is now exposed in a way that changed, nationwide, in the last few months.
Four things people conflate that are not the same problem
Fictitious pickup. Cargo is collected by someone impersonating the carrier that was actually booked, using a fabricated or stolen identity: an MC or DOT number, an insurance certificate, sometimes the real company's name. The freight is stolen outright and never delivered. Cargo-theft intelligence firm CargoNet describes it as a specialised form of theft requiring document forgery skill, the ability to run a convincing fraud by phone and email, somewhere to store the load, and a resale network already in place.
Double brokering. A carrier or broker re-brokers a load to someone else without the authorization of the original broker or shipper, typically to skim a margin, sometimes to launder a load through several transfers so its origin is harder to trace. The Transportation Intermediaries Association classifies this as a form of financial theft, distinct from cargo theft, though it is frequently the precursor to a fictitious pickup: criminals impersonate a legitimate party to reroute a shipment through multiple transfers, exploiting an unrealistically low rate to entice an unwitting carrier into hauling a fraudulent load.
Carrier identity theft. Fraudsters clone a legitimate, well-rated carrier's MC and DOT numbers, insurance certificates and company name to win freight they never intend to deliver honestly. TIA's own framework names the structural cause: in a world of fewer face-to-face interactions, it is often difficult to verify who you are actually doing business with.
Strategic cargo theft. Organised, planned theft using fake companies, forged documents and sometimes complicit employees, aimed at high-value freight, as against opportunistic theft off an unattended trailer. CargoNet's most recent reporting frames this precisely as the emerging dominant mode: criminal enterprises are becoming more selective and sophisticated, targeting extremely high-value shipments rather than relying on opportunistic theft.
What the numbers actually show
CargoNet and Verisk's full-year 2025 analysis, published January 2026, is the clearest primary picture available:
- 2,646 confirmed cargo theft incidents in 2025, up 18% from 2,243 in 2024, against a total supply-chain crime count that stayed essentially flat.
- Estimated total loss of roughly $725 million, up 60% year on year.
- Average value per theft of about $274,000, up 36% from $202,364 the year before. Fewer, bigger, better-targeted thefts, not more random ones.
- Food and beverage was the most targeted commodity (708 thefts, up 47%), with metals theft up 77% on copper demand, alongside enterprise computing hardware, cryptocurrency-mining equipment and vehicle parts.
- California recorded the most incidents (1,218), with New Jersey, Indiana and Pennsylvania showing the sharpest year-on-year increases.
2026 reporting so far continues the trend the 2025 numbers describe: overall incident counts have flattened or dipped slightly, while losses have kept climbing and deceptive pickup schemes specifically have continued rising as a share of the total. Read that as a market that has been rationalising, not weakening: fewer attempts, more successful ones, aimed at higher-value freight.
How a carrier's identity actually gets cloned
None of this requires much sophistication, which is precisely the problem. Cargo and broker liability insurer TT Club puts it plainly: it is relatively simple to generate email addresses, contact details and documents that are false but appear legitimate. From there, fraudsters take one of three routes: inventing a wholly fictitious carrier, impersonating a real one without its knowledge, or nominally operating under a real company's name with no intention of delivering honestly.
The mechanics that show up again and again:
- Driver-call diverting. A fraudster inserts itself into the middle of a legitimate shipper-carrier conversation, often through a load board, and redirects the pickup to a different location once contact has been established.
- Phone number mismatch. The number supplied in a booking email does not match the number on file in FMCSA's public SAFER system. This is the single most common tell, and the single most commonly skipped check.
- Forged certificates of insurance. A PDF is trivially editable. A convincing COI proves nothing on its own.
- Dormant or reactivated MC numbers. Fraudsters take over inactive authorities, or ones that changed hands recently, to inherit an established safety and insurance history that has not yet drawn scrutiny, then disappear after a short burst of loads.
That last pattern is exactly what regulators are now trying to close off. FMCSA introduced mandatory identity verification into its Unified Registration System from April 2025, matching new applicants' government photo ID against a live facial scan for every new USDOT, MC, broker or freight-forwarder registration. Reported effect: approval rates for new operating authority fell sharply in the first month as fraudulent and bot-driven applications were filtered out before they could reach the road. As of today the requirement reaches new registrants; whether and when it extends to existing ones has not been confirmed.
Two things regulation has not yet done, and it is worth being precise about the gap. First, no federal broker-transparency recordkeeping rule has been finalised. FMCSA proposed one in November 2024 requiring brokers to keep transaction records electronically and produce them within 48 hours of a request; that proposal drew roughly 7,000 comments, and rather than finalise it the rulemaking was restarted, with a second version reported to be pending publication. If you read that a 48-hour disclosure rule is now in force, it is not, as of the date this was checked. Second, double brokering is not, by itself, a federal crime with a set penalty. FMCSA has told Congress it currently lacks explicit civil-penalty authority over unauthorized brokering, following a 2019 ruling that stripped that authority, and legislation to hand it a fining power was still pending, not enacted, the last time it was checked.
What to actually check before you dispatch
None of the following is exotic. All of it is routinely skipped under time pressure, which is exactly what fraudsters count on.
- Verify MC and DOT authority directly on SAFER, at safer.fmcsa.dot.gov, not from a link or PDF the carrier supplied. Very recently granted or very recently reinstated authority is a widely cited red flag.
- Call the insurer, not the carrier, to confirm the certificate of insurance. A PDF proves the carrier can use a PDF editor.
- Cross-check the phone number against the SAFER listing rather than the number in the booking email or on a forwarded document.
- Keep direct multi-party contact between shipper, forwarder and carrier instead of routing everything through a single intermediary, which is the specific structure driver-call diverting exploits.
- Treat unrealistic urgency and unrealistically attractive rates as a warning, not a win. TT Club's advice is blunt: fraudsters target time-sensitive shipments and rates too good to pass up precisely to push a counterparty past its own procedures.
- Use tracking and geofencing where the freight value justifies it. TIA's own fraud framework names this as a standard control, alongside its member-facing Watchdog program for reporting confirmed fraud.
None of these checks are visible to your customer, which is exactly why they matter. A shipper who has been burned once will ask what you actually do before dispatch, and "we trusted the documents" is not an answer that keeps the account. If you are building a trading relationship on the strength of doing this properly, our guide to forwarder client onboarding covers the wider process, and vetting overseas agents covers the counterparty side specifically.
The liability landscape changed on 14 May 2026
This is the part of the story that has not caught up with most published guidance, and it matters to every broker and forwarder reading this.
Until this year, whether a broker could be sued for negligently selecting a carrier depended on which federal circuit the case landed in. Two circuits had held that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act preempts state-law negligent-selection claims against brokers, shielding them from that theory of liability. Two others had held the opposite, that such claims survive under the statute's safety exception. One of the preemption-favourable decisions, Aspen American Insurance Co. v. Landstar Ranger, Inc., was itself a fictitious pickup case: a thief posing as a Landstar-registered carrier made off with the shipment, and the insurer's negligent-selection claim against Landstar was dismissed on preemption grounds.
The Supreme Court resolved the split on 14 May 2026 in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC. The Court held, unanimously, that the FAAAA does not preempt state-law negligent-hiring and negligent-selection claims against freight brokers, because a broker's decision about which carrier to use falls within the statute's safety exception: it directly determines which trucks and drivers end up on the road. The underlying case had nothing to do with cargo theft. A broker selected a motor carrier whose truck later crashed into a parked vehicle, causing catastrophic injury, and the question was whether the injured party could sue the broker over its choice of carrier at all. The Court said yes, everywhere in the country.
The consequence for this article's actual subject is direct. The preemption defence that shielded brokers in fictitious pickup litigation like Aspen v. Landstar no longer exists in any circuit. A broker or forwarder that hands a load to an imposter because it skipped the SAFER check, trusted a forwarded COI, or dispatched on a rate that was too good to question, can now be sued for negligent selection regardless of where the case is filed. If your carrier-vetting process exists only informally, in someone's head, this is the year to write it down, because a documented, consistently applied procedure is precisely what a negligent-selection claim will test.
Where insurance does, and does not, help
Contingent cargo liability cover exists to protect a broker when the strictly liable carrier fails to pay for a loss. It commonly excludes losses arising from double brokering or from cargo released as a result of fraud, which is the coverage gap a straightforward fictitious pickup can fall into: the cargo was not stolen from you, you handed it over, and some policies treat that as a fraud exclusion rather than a theft claim. Read your own contingent cargo policy for a strategic-theft or fictitious-pickup exclusion before you assume a loss like this is covered. Some insurers are now underwriting around exactly this gap, tying restored strategic-theft coverage to loads carried by a carrier verified through a named vetting platform, which is a sign the market has recognised the problem rather than a substitute for your own checks.
A short list of things that are simply out of date
- "Brokers can't be sued over the carrier they picked." That defence existed in two circuits until 14 May 2026. It does not exist anywhere now.
- "There's a federal rule requiring brokers to hand over records within 48 hours." Not yet. It is a pending rulemaking, restarted after the first version was shelved.
- "Double brokering is a federal crime with a set fine." Not currently. FMCSA has asked Congress for that power and does not yet have it.
- "A clean-looking certificate of insurance is proof of cover." It is proof someone can use a PDF editor. Call the insurer.
- "Cargo theft is mainly an opportunistic, physical-security problem." The 2025 and 2026 data both point the other way: the growth is in identity-driven, document-based theft, which a padlock does nothing to stop.
Forwarders who can demonstrate a real vetting process are the ones shippers trust with their highest-value freight. If that is the reputation you are building, list your company in the CargoLinked directory, where more than 29,300 logistics companies are searchable by country and service, or post shipments to reach forwarders directly.
This article describes industry practice and a recent Supreme Court decision in general terms and is not legal advice. If your business is facing a specific fraud loss or liability claim, take advice on the facts.
