A federal grand jury in Memphis just returned two indictments covering nearly $600,000 in stolen freight switches sold on eBay, TVs, and tires lifted off CSX railcars. The cases are routine for this city. That’s the problem.
On July 12, 2024, a driver parked an 18-wheeler near a warehouse off Lamar Avenue in Memphis, couldn’t complete a delivery, and fell asleep in his cab. When he woke up, thieves had burglarized his trailer. The Memphis Cargo Theft Task Force found 54 Arista Ethernet switches stolen, valued at more than $468,000. That’s one night, one truck, one driver who needed a few hours of sleep. It cost a shipper nearly half a million dollars.
A federal grand jury in Memphis returned indictments in two separate interstate cargo theft investigations resulting in nearly $600,000 in losses to commercial freight carriers and companies operating in West Tennessee. U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant announced the indictments on September 22, 2026. Two cases, three defendants, separate incidents spanning six months in 2024. Each case is straightforward. Together they illustrate exactly what the FBI’s own task force in Memphis has been saying for years: in the Memphis region, there is an average of one cargo theft every day of the year, and Memphis, located along major interstate highways and home to a variety of product distribution centers, is a hot spot for cargo theft.
That is not a national statistic. That is a local daily schedule.
In the first matter, the grand jury indicted Aubrey Brown, 53, and Kemptrell Daniels, 24, for conduct occurring from July 2024 through August 2024. According to the indictment, Brown and Daniels allegedly knowingly received or possessed Arista computer networking switches and other commercial freight valued at more than $5,000 after stealing them from an interstate shipment. Arista makes enterprise-grade networking hardware, the equipment that sits inside data centers and corporate server rooms and manages the movement of data between devices, cloud services, and the internet. They aren’t cheap, about $8,700 each, according to a police report. Fifty-four of them off one trailer is $468,000 in a single night’s work.
Investigators found that Brown had posted the Arista Ethernet switches on eBay and had already sold 28 of them to various buyers. The switches all had serial numbers matching the stolen items. That’s the resale channel that makes cargo theft work at scale: a platform with national reach, anonymous enough to move volume, and familiar enough that buyers don’t ask why enterprise networking gear worth thousands of dollars per unit is listed by a private seller at a discount. Brown is further charged with transporting stolen Arista switches from Tennessee to other states, including California, Georgia, and Texas, knowing the goods had been stolen. He faces three federal charges. Daniels faces two. If convicted, each charge carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in federal prison, along with fines and supervised release.
Daniels wasn’t a first-time defendant when this indictment came down. In 2023, Daniels was also charged in a heist of $7,000 worth of laundry detergent. Police caught him stealing boxes of detergent from a tractor-trailer near a gas station in Southwest Memphis. From detergent to enterprise Ethernet switches in under two years. The federal system doesn’t have parole. If he’s convicted this time, the math is different.
In a separate indictment, a grand jury charged Pierre Smith, 32, with four counts of possession of stolen televisions and tires taken from interstate CSX rail shipments. According to the indictment, the conduct occurred from March 2024 through August 2024 and involved four separate thefts. The indictment alleges that Smith knowingly possessed stolen Insignia televisions from a shipment traveling from California to Georgia; stolen Toyo tires from a shipment traveling from Georgia to California; stolen Samsung televisions from a shipment traveling from California to Tennessee; and stolen Sumitomo tires from a shipment traveling from Georgia to Tennessee. Four thefts, two categories of goods, five months of activity, all from the same rail corridor running through Memphis. The rail piece matters: goods are often stolen from moving rail cars, which means the perimeter problem isn’t limited to truck stops and warehouse loading docks. It runs the length of the track.
All three defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in court. The indictments are allegations, not findings.
The broader picture behind these two cases is what demands attention. Verisk CargoNet reported that while the total number of supply chain crime incidents remained relatively stable in 2025, estimated losses surged to nearly $725 million, a 60 percent increase from 2024, as organized criminal groups increasingly focused on high-value shipments. The Arista switches at $8,700 a unit fit that profile exactly. The average value per theft rose to $273,990, up 36 percent from $202,364 in 2024. Thieves aren’t working harder. They’re working smarter, choosing freight whose resale value justifies the federal exposure.
Criminal enterprises are becoming more selective and sophisticated, targeting extremely high-value shipments rather than relying on opportunistic theft. Theft-by-deception groups are also expected to focus more on misdirecting shipments tendered to legitimate carriers, sidestepping compliance controls that have traditionally centered on the tendering process itself. What that means operationally: the old model of a bolt cutter on a trailer lock is still alive in Memphis, as these cases show, but the industry’s exposure is shifting toward schemes that don’t require a physical break-in at all. A load can vanish without anyone touching the trailer — rerouted on paper, delivered to the wrong hands through a fraudulent carrier or a double-brokered dispatch. The eBay model Brown allegedly used is a century-old resale mechanism layered onto a modern logistics crime. The misdirection model doesn’t even need a trailer.
CargoNet expects continued targeting of high-value technology products in 2026, particularly RAM modules, storage drives, and enterprise computing equipment. Arista Ethernet switches fall squarely in that category. If your freight moves enterprise networking hardware through Memphis, or through any hub city on an interstate corridor, the 2024 Lamar Avenue case isn’t an isolated incident to file away. It’s a scenario to plan against.
Memphis has prosecuted these cases consistently. Gregory Luss, 44, of Memphis, pleaded guilty to one count of possessing stolen goods from an interstate shipment in a case the FBI’s Cargo Theft Task Force investigated. Luss had posted a Water Pik product for sale on his registered eBay account in October 2023 on the same day a tractor-trailer was stolen in Memphis filled with Water Piks intended for shipment to Amazon, according to court documents cited by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In July 2026, prosecutors in the Western District of Tennessee indicted twelve people for their involvement in an organized cargo theft conspiracy targeting Nike’s North American Logistics Center in Memphis, following a multi-year investigation by the FBI’s Cargo Theft Task Force. The investigation revealed the co-defendants stole at least $2 million in Nike product. The September 22 indictments are the third public cargo theft prosecution out of the Western District of Tennessee in 2026. The pipeline is moving.
Federal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 659 interstate theft of freight carries up to 10 years per count when the stolen goods exceed $1,000 in value. The federal system has no parole. That’s the ceiling for each count, not for the case as a whole. Smith faces four counts. Brown faces three. Daniels faces two. The arithmetic on sentencing exposure is significant, though actual sentences depend on guidelines calculations, criminal history, and what judges do at sentencing, none of which has happened yet.
What the record doesn’t establish: whether Brown, Daniels, or Smith are connected to any organized theft network beyond their alleged individual conduct. The indictments charge possession and transportation of stolen goods, not conspiracy. Those are distinct charges with distinct elements, and the government charged what it could prove. That’s where the public record stops.
For shippers, insurers, and carriers moving high-value technology freight through Memphis today: check your freight agreements for theft exclusions, verify your carrier’s trailer-tracking capability before tender, and review your cargo insurance policy’s definition of a covered theft event. The Lamar Avenue trailer was parked and unattended overnight. Depending on your policy language, that detail matters more than the dollar value of what was inside it.
