Organized crime is building an AI hardware cargo theft economy: ‘The economics have become just crazy from the criminal opportunistic perspective’

With the data center boom projected to swell into a $7 trillion market by the end of the decade, organized criminals are centering on a particular shadow economy: hijacking AI supply chains and selling their spoils on the foreign black market for a hefty profit.

Cargo theft has been around for centuries, evident for example in the train robbers of the late 1800s, but soaring demand for AI hardware has shifted heist targets to data centers and the technology’s ever-expanding infrastructure. This new black market first emerged nearly as soon as ChatGPT’s release, gaining steam three to five years ago along with the AI buildout, said David Warrick, executive vice president of supply-chain risk management firm Overhaul. The expansion of the technology has been so rapid it’s created hardware shortages, including a memory chip ‘RAM-ageddon’ that tech experts fear will persist for years. It’s also created multimillion-dollar opportunities for smugglers who have found weak points along the technology’s American supply chain.

Just last week, investigators with the Cook County Sheriff’s office in Illinois recovered $1.3 million worth of data center equipment last week, saying in a social media post that authorities found two trailers outside of Chicago, with one including $300,000 in copper wires that were reported stolen in Pine Hill, Alabama, as well as about $1 million in data center infrastructure equipment that was reported stolen in Jacksonville, Florida, earlier this month. Copper wires are commonly used for data transmission and cooling systems.

“The economics have become just crazy from the criminal opportunistic perspective,” Warrick told Fortune. “As the world pours a trillion dollars in there, and everybody’s spending a lot of money, the criminals are saying, ‘What a great opportunity; you need to be part of this.’ That’s the way it works.”

The rise of the AI hardware theft economy

Cargo theft was a $725 million problem in 2025, according to data analytics firm Verisk CargoNet, and in just the first three months of this year, there have been 767 incidents of cargo theft totalling $132 million in stolen goods. While the total number of incidents decreased from 3,854 in 2024 to 3,594 in 2025, the average value of the stolen goods rose from around $200,000 to nearly $275,000 over the same period. According to Overhaul, electronics made up 22% of all thefts last year.

“High-value, easily resold technology—such as servers, semiconductors, and other components powering AI infrastructure—is an increasingly attractive target,” Verisk CargoNet told Fortune in a statement. “While electronics have long been a focus for thieves, the growth of AI and data center demand is raising the value of these shipments and increasing their exposure during transit.”

These thefts don’t just present a supply chain threat, disrupting manufacturing and delaying deployment of key infrastructure, according to the Verisk, but it also presents a potential economic headache: These operational disruptions can cost companies several times more than the value of the stolen technology itself. 

Last July, the Reno Police Department in Nevada said in a news release that a truck shipment managed by Ceva Logistics that contained about $15 million in semiconductors and Apple products was stolen. Two weeks later, authorities found the empty trailer in California, about 280 miles away. In December 2024, thieves stole more than $7 million in Nvidia computer chips from a California warehouse within a day of its scheduled delivery to a San Jose Supermicro facility.

How AI cargo thieves make their money

Cargo thieves aren’t everyday people trying to make a buck off some copper wires, Warrick explained; they’re part of larger crime rings smuggling products to parts of the world—such as China, Russia, and Iran—where the U.S. government has made a concerted effort to ban exports of domestic AI technologies. The business is lucrative: The Financial Times reported last month, citing traders, that the price of Nvidia’s RTX 6000 Pro workstation chip on the black market has more than doubled in China since the beginning of the year as a result of high demand.

“When we say organized crime, we actually mean organized crime,” Warrick said — from gangs to coordinated theft rings. “These are international syndicates. They run like big corporations…They have penetrated the supply chains at all levels, in terms of drivers, in terms of warehouse operators. They know where all the high value goods are, they know who transacts them, and they look for the weak points in the supply chain to be able to exploit those.”

These heists are conducted through sophisticated means. In April, the FBI issued a public service announcement warning of “cyber threat actors increasingly using sophisticated, cyber-enabled tactics to impersonate legitimate businesses to hijack freight, steal high-value shipments, and reroute deliveries.” The actors break into computer systems and use spoofed emails and fake URLs to gain unauthorized access to shipping operations. In other instances, Warrick said, there will be ghost carriers or fraudulent pickups of drivers or middlemen posing as legitimate transporters, but who are really smugglers.

The logistics industry has adapted accordingly, finding new software to certify driver’s licenses and paperwork, as well as using generative AI to track cargo. Warrick said Overhaul has 30 billion data points, adding about 250 million data points into its AI engine monthly.

“We’re having to evolve not only with technology,” Warrick said, “but because we understand that this is an arms race.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com