Cargo thieves target AI data center supplies in $1.3 million heists — $300,000 worth of copper wire and $1 million worth of equipment recovered outside Chicago

The boom in data center construction meant that millions of dollars’ worth of servers, cabling, and other parts and components are on the road at any given time. Because of this, cargo thieves and hijackers have started targeting these high-value items. Business Insider reports that a trailer containing about $300,000 worth of copper wire spool, which can be used for powering data center servers, was recovered last week by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in a truck yard near Chicago. The truck yard owner also said that the same driver dropped off another stolen trailer a week earlier, this time containing about a million dollars’ worth of data center equipment.

Both trailers have been reported stolen — the former taken from Pine Hill, Alabama, and the latter from Jacksonville, Florida. The original locations where these trailers were stolen show the nationwide scale of these theft rings, which had previously mostly targeted retail goods. The trailer that contained the copper wire spools also had its tags replaced with one from Indiana, according to Freight Pulse, probably in an attempt to obfuscate its source. It’s unclear how the data center equipment cargo was discovered, but the trailer carrying the copper wire was located through its GPS tracker.

Data center equipment, especially servers, seems like a lucrative target, especially given how expensive these items are. However, they are also specialized machines that are often only bought by institutions and large companies, so thieves would likely have a hard time selling them on the black market. They also likely have serial numbers, which would make it easier for buyers to check the status of the equipment with the manufacturer. Given the cost required to invest in these things, buyers would most probably demand official receipts and warranties — something that thieves and fences won’t be able to provide.

However, consumer electronics are easier targets, and we’ve seen theft rings hit consumer electronics before. For example, about $1.4 million worth of Switch 2 consoles en route to a GameStop branch in Texas were stolen from the back of a semi-truck last year. Gaming GPUs are popular targets for theft rings, too, with a shipment of EVGA 30-series GPUs stolen from the back of the truck in 2021 appearing in Vietnam a few months later, being sold by a major retailer at a discount. Another set of MSI RTX 3090s was also lifted directly from the company’s China factory in 2020, with the 220 GPUs estimated to amount to $336,500.

There are probably more incidents of theft that have been reported to the police but not publicly known. And although the value of the stolen goods could be staggering for the average person, companies and freighters often have insurance coverage, so they don’t have to worry about paying out of pocket for the entire loss.