Somebody has a lot of beer.
A truck packed with 40,000 pounds of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer has vanished in California, and police believe the missing brew haul may be linked to two other missing truckloads in August as part of an organized cargo theft operation.
The stolen truck was loaded with what is the equivalent of more than 50,000 cans of the company’s signature brew, reportedly valued at approximately $70,000.
Pabst revealed the theft last week and has been responding on social media with a bit of tongue-in-cheek, saying it understands the temptation to brag about having that much of their prize-winning brew but wished they had come by it in “the honorable way.”
The company put the thief on the clock, offering exactly “18 days and 44 minutes” to return the truck with no questions asked, according to ABC News.
The brewer did not explain the unusual countdown, but the 18-day, 44-minute window appeared to be a reference to 1844, the year Pabst was founded.
The company’s Instagram page features several posts asking for its beer back, tossing in a little humor with its requests.
One of the posts addressed suspicion that the disappearance was a marketing stunt.
“To clear up the confusion, this story is real,” Pabst wrote, urging anyone with information that could help solve the case to send a direct message.
As the deadline ticked down, the company warned that the “beer is getting warmer” while the trail gets colder.
It asked anyone who may have spotted the truck to snap a photo, tag Pabst, or send a direct message with information about its whereabouts.
The theft took place in Montclair, a suburban city in the Inland Empire about 40 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
Police there actually are also investigating two other cargo thefts reported August 17 at an Anheuser-Busch distribution center that investigators believe could be linked.
Fox News reported:
In the first incident, a beer shipment worth about $45,000 and bound for Tucson, Arizona, was picked up for delivery around 10 a.m. local time but never arrived, police said.
About an hour later, police said, a company claiming to be a subcontractor used fraudulent paperwork to arrange the pickup of roughly $25,000 in Anheuser-Busch and Pabst Blue Ribbon products.
Montclair detectives said the trucking company information, driver, and vehicles connected to the pickups contained discrepancies.
All three cargo thefts may be part of the same operation, police said.
Breitbart News contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
