Earlier this month, a brazen lobster theft took place in Massachusetts. Somewhere between a warehouse in Taunton, Massachusetts and the destination in Illinois, a trucker absconded with a full load worth $400,000.

Dylan Rexing says his business, Rexing Companies, was hired to hire a driver to drive the lobsters from Taunton to the midwest on Dec. 12 but the carrier they hired turned off their GPS monitor shortly after leaving with the shipment and disappeared.

The cargo was never delivered and Rexing said he later learned the driver provided a fake identity, something that has become a growing problem in the shipping industry.

Alas, though many stories reported these were live lobsters, that does not appear to be accurate. From a (paywalled) Boston Globe article:

The load of processed lobster meat took off from Lineage Logistics, a cold storage facility in Taunton, on Dec. 12. The shipment was bound for Costco warehouses in Illinois and Minnesota but never made it there.

I had really hoped this might be some sort of a “Free Willy” scenario.