According to a short blurb in the Wichita Eagle Newspaper of this date .
Five men were indicted in Los Angeles on charges of attempted theft of $200.000.00 worth of 3-D Televisions from a freight train heist, captured on video captured by investigators who had followed them into the So. California desert.
Arrested on June 25, after unloading 45 televisions from a parked BNSF train near Ludlow. A Mojave Destert town in San Bernardino County, U.S. ICE oficialssaid.
Arrests followed a two month investigation in which se cret recordings were made between a confidential informant and ringleaders. The gang used coded language to describe their targets and then followed the trains until there was an opportunity to steal the goods. ( paraphrased content of article)
Train robberies are as old as railroading itself. But this business of breaking into containers got started soon after they began hauling imported merchandise inland on doublestacks. In the mid-1980s, when most of the U.S. was phasing out cabooses, SP was beginning to run some of its first stack trains across the Sunset Route. It didn't take long before they decided to call back a few bay window cabooses, paint them white, and tack them on the rear of stack trains with a special agent on board to help watch over the goods.
This exact problem has been happening between San Bernardino and Needles for several years now. BNSF has made some arrests, but the criminals seem to be adept at staying a step ahead of the law. As soon as you catch one group, another will pop up, if the pay-off is big enough. There are easy ways to deal with the problem, but the manufacturers don't want to incur the small additional cost. They pass the loss along to the RR as a freight loss claim, so it doesn't hit manufacturers bottom line. Until both BNSF and UP impose shipping rules on such high value products, the problem will persist.
Thought that perhaps some of you had not (yet) heard about a couple of brazen BNSF freight train robberies in the CA desert:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_freight_train_heist;_ylt=AvjqzTvig3_0T6Ngf5Oq8uOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNxcjdlMGMzBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNzEwL3VzX2ZyZWlnaHRfdHJhaW5faGVpc3QEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwM5BHBvcwM2BHB0A2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW5faGVhZGxpbmVfbGlzdARzbGsDNWNoYXJnZWRpbmNh
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