$500,000 of home audio equipment stolen from semi in-transit to California Amazon warehouse

By Charlie Lapastora

Two men were arrested after detectives found around $400,000 worth of electronic equipment stolen from a semi-truck with another $100,000 of equipment gone, which Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department Detective Royjindar Singh believes was sold on eBay.

“When the truck arrived at the Amazon facility, the workers opened the back and noticed that the entire shipment was missing,” Detective Singh said. “The truck was completely empty.”

Gone was $500,000 worth of electronic equipment as Detective Singh says home audio equipment like record players and boombox speakers were in transit from an east coast manufacturer to a California Amazon warehouse. 

“I, personally, have not seen one of this magnitude, where an entire semi-truck full of stuff has been stolen,” Detective Singh said. 

Detective Singh says they’ve seen a trend for package thefts year-round and an increase during and after deal days, such as Amazon Prime Day.

“We’ve had…multiple cases where Amazon delivery trucks, similar to…our sprinter vans that were taken. And those were usually quick events,” he said. “The driver’s making a delivery, somebody jumped in the truck, drove IT a few miles, unloaded everything, abandoned the truck and they were gone. We have had several of those in our county in recent years.”

Detective Singh said the east coast vendor actually started doing his own detective work and found his products being sold on eBay. He then reached out to the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office who took over the investigation.

“These types of crimes are definitely not a victimless crime,” Detective Singh said. “Because, at the end, somebody’s going to have to pay for the merchandise that’s gone, whether it’s insurance claims that are being paid to the vendor, that makes the price of these merchandise go up because the insurance rates potentially go up, so at the end of the day, somebody’s having to pay the cost of these stolen items and merchandise and that’s really not the way that society should operate.”

After a two-month investigation, detectives arrested 58-year-old Turlock resident Ravinder Singh and 36-year-old Modesto resident Nepal Singh for possession of stolen property. 

Detective Singh said for large thefts, it depends on the dollar value stolen, it’s a felony offense, so that can mean prison time and that California law recently changed where if there are multiple petty thefts under a certain dollar amount, can also lead to felony charges and prison time.

For the extra $100,000 worth of equipment missing that Detective Singh thinks may have been sold on eBay, he wants people to be vigilant. Both when ordering packages to ensure that they are delivered to a safe place and when buying items online.

“We do believe this might be some type of organized operation,” Detective Singh said. “It’s not something that somebody would just wake up one day and able to steal and unload an entire truckload of merchandise. So we do believe that there may be more players that may be arrested in the future.”

Unfortunately, Detective Singh said this type of organized crime is getting more common. So, he encourages the public, if you see something fishy, including if you see a big rig driving on a country road with no warehouses nearby, to please call 9-1-1.