A UPS employee caused many deliveries to disappear in a very short time. Among them were 866 Apple products. The damage amounts to over 880,000 euros.
Thefts at shipping companies and parcel services are not an isolated case. Repeatedly, deliveries containing expensive items go missing. The thieves either use the goods themselves or resell them.
The amount of damage is usually manageable when, for example, only a graphics card is stolen. However, if a series of robberies extends over several months and hundreds of orders disappear, it can take on gigantic proportions.
A case like this has now been reported at UPS in Canada. There, 866 Apple products were stolen. The packages with iPhones and iPads had a value of over 880,000 euros.
866 iPhones and iPads worth 880,000 euros stolen
What was stolen? The stolen goods consisted of package deliveries that went missing in Canada between July 2023 and January 2024. A UPS employee stole the packages unnoticed from a warehouse of his employer.
The deliveries included jewelry valued at approximately 6,200 euros. However, the bulk of the loot consisted of 866 iPhones and iPads. The total value is said to be over 880,000 euros. The thief sold the loot for a lower value on the Kijiji platform.
On the platform, which is comparable to eBay Classifieds, he acted cleverly. To avoid getting caught, he handled payments either in cash or via anonymized bank transfer. A robber of 100 PS5 consoles was not so clever and was caught before selling the loot.
What mistake led to the arrest? The UPS employee used the money to pay off his car worth 41,000 euros. The largest sum, almost 430,000 euros, went towards the purchase of a house.
During the period of his robbery series, he also transferred around 158,000 euros to his own bank accounts. This large sum of transfers over several months ultimately led to his downfall.
For this reason, he came under the scrutiny of the investigating officials, who ordered a search. During a house search, officials found several thousand euros in cash, expensive jewelry, and Apple products in his premises and car.
After his arrest, the thief confessed to the crime. The responsible court is now examining the confiscation of his possessions and bank accounts.
The employee managed to steal from his employer over several months and thus engaged in his criminal activities for a long time. If he had wanted to work directly at the source at Apple, he might have already failed at the interview: Steve Jobs tested new employees with tricky tricks during the interview process
