Here’s a story straight from the Bee – not the Babylon Bee, though: the Sacramento Bee.
And it’s a story that’s literally nuts.
It was only because of an audit earlier this month that the Touchstone Pistachio Company realised what had happened. There were 42,000 missing pounds of pistachios to account for – with the bizarre heist meaning serious profit loss for the company. After only a day of investigation, however, authorities cracked the case.
Investigations swiftly led to the uncovering of a Seinfeld-esque caper.
According to The Sacramento Bee, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) was contacted to look into the matter on June 17. Within a day, investigators found that one of the company’s tractor-trailers had been curiously moved from its trucking lot in Delano to another nearby.
Opening the vehicle proved fruitful, as authorities found all 42,000 pounds of the missing nuts inside, being repackaged from their original 2,000-pound bags into smaller ones for resale. And 34-year-old Alberto Montemayor is now the prime suspect[…]
“Detectives found that the pistachios were being moved from 2,000-pound sacks into smaller bags for re-sale,” said the TCSO on Facebook. “The remaining pistachios were returned to the Touchstone Pistachio Company. Thirty-four-year-old Alberto Montemayor of Montemayor trucking was arrested and booked in Tulare County.”
Move over, New Zealand gangs and their avocado heists.
While pistachios are a cherished and beloved food in Iran, their presence in Central California’s marketplace has made for a lucrative industry, according to The Washington Post. Last year alone, these nuts provided more than 47,000 jobs and added $5.2 billion to the economy. And that fact has not gone unnoticed by thieves.
The Tulare County Sheriff’s Office itself has wrangled with pistachio thieves before, with a 23-year-old man arrested for stealing two truck-loads valued at $294,000 as recently as last August. One might wonder what the appeal of pistachios is, save for their market value. The answer is, essentially, that they’re untraceable.
Those who frequent the highways of Central California have surely seen large trucks hauling huge payloads before. The region is responsible for most of America’s walnut, pistachio, and almond production, after all. Most importantly, those nuts don’t have serial numbers.
It’s precisely because the nuts are untraceable that selling these goods to retailers is so easy. Between 2014 and 2017, these operations saw a staggering loss of more than $7.6 million.
All That’s Interesting
That’s a lotta nuts.
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