Nearly half a million dollars worth of bourbon has been stolen in a broad daylight heist, in one of the largest thefts of its kind this year.
Approximately 10,800 cases of Noble Oak bourbon were picked up by a truck driver to transport them from a North Philadelphia warehouse to New Jersey Friday, but the shipment never made it to its final destination.
Rob Koch, chief operating officer of Noble Oak’s parent company A-21 Wine and Spirits, said: “It seems like an organised group of criminals deceived one of our warehouse locations by getting them to load up about 11,000 bottles of bourbon into their vehicles…and made off with a whole ton of bourbon.
“The significance of this is that this is one of the largest thefts of bourbon that we’ve seen, especially this year,” he told NBC10.
Investigators are still trying to track down the missing shipment, in what they believe was a coordinated heist.
Koch believes the theft was organised as culprits appeared to have prior knowledge of a high value shipment. They knew when it would be picked up how to successfully deceive the warehouse holding it, he explained.
“Unfortunately the local warehouse missed some regular security protocols and allowed them to enter into the yard and then move forward with the heist,” Koch continued.
“Standard protocol is to take a copy of someone’s ID… the team did take a picture of someone’s ID, whoever it might have been. I’m assuming it was a fake.”
The COO said the company has a picture of the driver and another person in the cab. There is security footage from the warehouse, but it largely shows the warehouse workers filling up the truck. A-21 is now working with local authorities to help with the investigation.
Koch described the incident as “a rollercoaster,” explaining that incidents like this drive up inflation and impact the consumer price index.
“It’s been very stressful,” he told NBC10. “It’s been a huge emotional rollercoaster, but every bottle for us plants a tree, so even though these thieves heisted 10,800 bottles of bourbon from our company, we’re still planting those trees.
“I’ve got to make some more bourbon, and make sure that the world out there is properly libated.”
The large-scale theft comes as the wider alcohol industry in the U.S. faces challenging conditions, from inflation domestically to Canadian provinces started American alcohol in response to Donald Trump’s tariff war.
Fewer Americans are consuming alcohol because of the cost increases from tariffs on foreign liquor and stalled aluminium shipments in the Strait of Hormuz which are impacting the cost of beer cans.
Even immigration policies have led to a reduction in drinking, with Constellation Brands CEO William Newlands telling an earnings call in January that their previously reliable Hispanic beer-buying customers were either too afraid to come to the store to buy liquor, or too afraid to go to work and thus didn’t have the money to buy alcohol.
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