‘F**k the police’: Accused cargo thief makes off with snow crab, blueberries, and cologne price $750K

A Long Island man is facing federal charges over a series of cargo heists that netted nearly 34,000 pounds of frozen snow crab and a tractor-trailer full of name-brand cologne, worth more than $750,000 in total.

Romoy Forbes, 31, used hacked email addresses to pose as a driver from actual trucking firms, according to an FBI probable cause affidavit that was unsealed Thursday. Then, instead of delivering the stolen goods to the customers that had paid for them, Forbes and a crew of unnamed co-conspirators simply fenced the illicit merchandise on the black market, the affidavit states.

But, it says, while the seafood and fragrance heists generated big returns, Forbes also purloined a load of blueberries he was only able to unload for a comparatively paltry $4,000.

“I don’t really sell produce,” a buyer in New Jersey texted Forbes, according to a screenshot included in the affidavit. “At all.”

At one point, a warehouse worker called one of Forbes’s alleged associates, who was masquerading as a dispatcher at a trucking firm, to find out why his load hadn’t made it to the buyer, the affidavit goes on. When the warehouseman didn’t get a satisfactory answer, and told the bogus dispatcher that he would be contacting police, the affidavit says the individual simply replied, “F**k the police,” and hung up.

Forbes, a Jamaican national, was arrested Thursday, according to court records. He does not yet have an attorney listed on the docket, and was unable to be reached for comment.

Cargo theft, one trucking industry insider recently told the Associated Press, is “a massive growing problem that needs to get addressed.” Last fall, cargo thieves in the New England area made off with 14 cages filled with 40,000 full-grown oysters from an aquaculture operation in Maine, a load of crab from a Massachusetts warehouse, and $400,000 worth of lobster meat awaiting shipment to Costco stores in the Midwest – the details of the lobster heist virtually mirroring those laid out in the case against Forbes.

“The carrier we hired impersonated a real carrier,” the CEO of the brokerage company that arranged the shipment told the AP. “Whether you eat seafood or not, they’re stealing other items. They’re stealing items to build your cars. They’re stealing items that go into computers,” he said. “Ultimately, that cost gets thrown to the consumer.”

The FBI investigation into Forbes began with a call from an employee at a Worcester, Massachusetts, warehouse, who said that 33,750 pounds of frozen snow crab, worth $325,000, had been stolen from the facility on July 15, 2025, according to the affidavit.

When a commercial shipper needs goods delivered, they typically post the job online for carriers to bid on the contract, the probable cause affidavit explains. In this instance, it says the warehousing firm that “Person 1 “worked for had posted an ad on an online freight exchange service board, seeking someone to drive a load of crabs to Jacksonville, Florida.

On July 14, 2025, Person 1 got a call from someone at a known trucking firm about delivering the crabs, the affidavit states. The employee at the trucking firm sent back the required paperwork using an authentic corporate email address, according to the affidavit. But, it continues, what Person 1 didn’t know at the time was that the trucking firm’s email system had been hacked, and “the purported employee… who controlled the email account was really a co-conspirator in the scheme.”

The next morning, Forbes arrived at the warehouse in a red tractor-trailer, provided his real driver’s license and phone number to Person 1, and drove off with 33,750 pounds of snow crab, the affidavit states.

“Forbes did not deliver the cargo load of frozen crabs to the customer,” it continues.

A day later, Person 1 realized that the GPS device that was supposed to be tracking Forbes’s progress was not working, and he called the trucking firm’s main number, the affidavit says. There, Person 1 got an authentic employee on the phone, who told him the firm’s email system had been compromised and that they “had not, in fact, booked the cargo load.”

Person 1 then called Forbes, who claimed his dispatcher had given the trailer of crabs “to someone else,” the affidavit states. He then gave Person 1 a phone number for the dispatcher, after which Person 1 called and “spoke to an individual, who said not to worry about the delivery,” according to the affidavit.

“Person 1 told the individual that he would be contacting the police, and the individual said, ‘F**k the police,’ and hung up on Person 1,” it contends.

The FBI was able to obtain the contents of Forbes’s mobile phone, which contained texts between Forbes and his “dispatcher,” along with a photo of the stolen crab at the Queens, New York loading dock of “a grocery store company, which operates a number of grocery stores in various states,” according to the affidavit.

The evidence the FBI gathered from Forbes’s phone also “reveal[ed] that the seafood heist… was not the first theft that Forbes committed as part of the conspiracy,” the affidavit alleges.

Agents learned that Forbes had employed the same technique a month earlier, using a hacked email address from a second trucking company to bid on, and win, a job transporting a load of blueberries to Illinois, the affidavit says.

On June 26, 2025, Forbes showed up at a warehouse in Winslow Junction, New Jersey, claimed to work for “Shipper 2,” loaded up his red tractor-trailer with the fruit and drove away, according to the affidavit. Once again, the load never made it to the intended recipient.

Screenshots of texts between the two show Forbes negotiating with his “customer for everything,” who says he doesn’t normally deal in produce and opens with an offer of $3,500 for the entire load. Forbes counters with $4,000, which the customer accepts, after which Forbes says he “won’t be able to get the beef because this is a trailer I was going to use to get the beef,” according to the texts.

On July 25, Forbes struck again – this time, pilfering “approximately $433,830 worth of cologne” meant for a buyer in Los Angeles, the affidavit states. As in the first two thefts, Forbes allegedly booked the job using a hacked email address from a third trucking concern. One of Forbes’s cronies emailed the sender, a freight brokerage in Ronkonkoma, New York, saying, “Romoy will pick up this one… Romoy Forbes Trk 212 Trailer 167.”

“Forbes had the boxes of fragrances loaded into the truck,” but he “never delivered the goods to the customer,” the affidavit says. And again, when the shipper called the carrier Forbes claimed to have been working for, staffers there said their email system had also been hacked, and that they never booked the cologne job.

Forbes exchanged texts about the 14 pallets of fragrances with his “customer for everything,” who appeared to agree to take them off his hands. However, no sales price is included in the affidavit.

Forbes is charged with one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and one count of conspiracy, which carries up to five years in prison.

Source: independent.co.uk