Freight theft from freight trains in the Los Angeles area has skyrocketed, with detectives estimating more than 90 containers are opened every day and thefts from freight trains in the Union Pacific area are up about 160% year over year. are doing. Nationwide, cargo theft caused nearly $1 billion in losses last year. The companies have declined to comment, but California's governor has publicly questioned the prevalence of rail theft. Most of those arrested were unorganized. Many of them were homeless people nearby, opportunistically taking away boxes that had fallen off the tracks. The main cause of theft is the vulnerabilities created by the e-commerce boom, which has reshaped freight transportation to meet consumer demand. Railway police and online retailers aim to combat this, but admit it is difficult to trace stolen goods resold anonymously online. Some of the products stolen from the containers are resold on Amazon. New York Times Magazine: Items stolen from Amazon containers are sometimes resold on Amazon by third-party sellers in some kind of bizarre ouroboros. The snakehead of capitalism greedily swallows the tail of piracy. Last June, California's attorney general touted a first-of-its-kind agreement between online retailers pledging to better track, report and prevent the resale of stolen goods on their platforms. created what was written. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on specific cases, but told me the company is working to improve its process for vetting sellers. The number of “malicious attempts” to create new seller accounts on Amazon has decreased from 6 million to 800,000 by 2022. In 2020.
Read more about this article on Slashdot.
