“’It’s probably the worst that I’ve seen it in the 27 years that I’ve been doing this,’ said Scott Cornell, a cargo theft specialist at Travelers…As load boards (online platforms that match carriers with freight shipments) evolved to make brokering transactions online easier and faster, criminals—looking to steal large quantities of high-value goods—spotted opportunities, Cornell said.”
The Wall Street Journal reports such fraud quadrupled from ’22 to ’23, reaching an est. $500 million.
The Journal describes a case of “double-brokering,” a sort of “man-in-the-middle scam” where crooks go on a load board and pretend to be a legitimate carrier looking to get hired to carry a load. When they get paid online for picking up and carrying the shipment, they farm it out to a cheaper carrier and keep the difference in fees, demand a ransom or just divert the cargo. The real carrier may have no idea its name is being used until the owner of the shipment reports it missing.
The case described by the paper ended up with an insurance claim. The paper does not specify whether the claim is against cyber liability insurance or some other coverage.
Load boards are now under pressure to add MFA, be more vigilant about scam accounts and take other measures to fight this emerging cyber crime.
Read the report here (paywall may apply).