A crew of six Southern California men has been charged with heists targeting Nvidia and Apple shipments, where they allegedly broke into warehouses or robbed delivery trucks of their high-priced hardware contents.
If you’re going to steal, why not steal from the most profitable company on the planet, Santa Clara-based chipmaker Nvidia? That’s what six Southern California-based burglars allegedly thought, as they’re accused of a $7 million heist of Nvidia chips last December from a Burlingame warehouse that were headed for Supermicro facility in San Jose the next day. Same goes for their alleged June 3 theft of nearly $200,000 worth of Nvidia chips in Fremont. After all, Nvidia is a $5 trillion company, so maybe no one will notice a few hundred thousand or million dollars worth of merchandise missing.
Well, police and the FBI have noticed. They also noticed that the suspected same crew lifted $100,000 worth of Apple watches from Ashtabula County, Ohio this past October, and several other heists that sure seemed to show a deep understanding of the tech firms’ supply chains and delivery schedules.
And now, Bay Area News Group reports that six men have been arrested and charged in federal court in this high-tech theft ring that prosecutors say has netted as much as $22 million in stolen gear.
The accused ringleaders here are brothers Galo Horacio Chamorro and Joao Jose Chamorro of Southern California, though they are accused of having four other accomplices who are named in an indictment. Per the News Group, a previous 2022 raid of their home netted a pneumatic jack that prosecutors say was used in previous burglaries, plus radio signal jammers, walkie-talkies, and naturally, multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars laying around in cash.
The News Group’s report describes the alleged thieves’ sophistication. "The thieves allegedly used fraudulently registered cars, switched or removed license plates, and conducted countersurveillance to keep tabs on law enforcement attempting to monitor them," that outlet notes.
Much of the high-tech merchandise the crew allegedly stole is quite small and quite valuable, making it a pretty lucrative niche in the theft sector. This particular string of alleged thefts goes back five years, with the Bay Area News Group saying that “They broke into warehouses, distribution centers, cross-dock facilities, and even cleaned out trailer trucks while the driver stopped at a red light.”
Related: Man Charged With Burglarizing FBI Truck In SF, Trading the Stolen Gear for $20 Bag of Meth [SFist]
Image: SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA - MAY 30: A company sign is displayed outside the NVIDIA headquarters on May 30, 2023 in Santa Clara, California. Chipmaker NVIDIA reached a $1 trillion market cap at the open bell of the NYSE on Tuesday morning. The company is forecasting second quarter sales of $11 billion, 50 percent higher than analyst estimates of $7.15 billion. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
