Authorities are waiting for the thieves to steal a tractor-trailer loaded with spy equipment and parked at a warehouse somewhere in America

What is it?

These ‘Sting trailers’ are becoming very helpful in recovering pilfered merchandise by busting up crime rings. They have proved a huge success but still, no one can say it for sure when or if the felons will take it. There are hundreds of thousands of companies out there offering cargo services like door-to-door cargo, air cargo or sea cargo to Pakistan and rest of the world.

In the US alone, cargo theft causes $15 to $30 billion in losses each year, making it a matter of grave importance, says the FBI. To fight back, insurance industry and law enforcement agencies are using the cameras and GPS tracking devices hidden into inventory and the ‘sting trailers’.

What about the thieves?

According to the cargo fraud investigator, the crooks are becoming more and more intelligent “they figure out what they have to defeat, so they do their homework and try something new, and maybe that will work for a while, and maybe the companies will come up with something to fix that problem. It keeps mushrooming.”

When they become handier?

Every merchandiser and law enforcement agency does its best to prevent any kind of theft but still it happens, especially during the holiday shopping season. This number increases multiple times as the thieves target the retailers for higher score. Since they go for nondescript trailers to avoid easy identification, here ‘Sting trailers’ become handy and help security agencies to know how crooks work and what kind of locks give them hard time.

Are they any good?

Travelers Cos., is a New York-based company which has developed a sting trailer equipped with $100,000 worth of surveillance gear in 2008 at their lab in Windsor, Connecticut. They proudly claim that they are the only insurance company using a sting trailer and their vehicle has been used hundreds of times by law enforcement agencies nationwide, resulting in dozens of arrests.