Freight fraud is a growing crisis impacting shippers, brokers, and logistics providers (and ultimately consumers) across North America. A wide array of increasingly sophisticated fraudulent schemes — data spoofing, unlawful brokerage scams, fictitious pickups, phishing, identity theft, email/virus, inbound phone calls, text messages — can quickly transform what should be a routine shipment into a costly disaster. And these fraud attempts are rolling in fast and furious: a 2025 Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) survey found that 83% of respondents experienced at least three types of fraud in the last six months, with 71% experiencing four or more.
Unfortunately, a growing number of fraud attempts are hitting paydirt for bad actors. Overhaul recorded 645 cargo theft incidents in Q3 2025 across the United States, marking a troubling 29% year-over-year (YoY) increase. California and Texas remained the cargo theft hotspots, accounting for 35% and 22% of the national total, respectively. In line with previous years’ findings, the most targeted product categories were electronics, accounting for 17% of total thefts.
Verisk CargoNet reported similar findings, recording 772 cargo theft events across the United States and Canada in Q3 2025 for a loss of $111.88 million, and this is likely not a complete representation of the magnitude of the freight fraud issue. A study from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) found that the fear of higher premiums leads more than 40% of motor carriers to avoid reporting all theft incidents to their insurance carriers.
The costly ripple effect
As organized crime groups become even more strategic in selecting targets — stealing high-value shipments such as enterprise computer hardware, cryptocurrency mining equipment, and copper products — the financial impact of cargo theft continues to escalate.
As of mid-November, Verisk CargoNet recorded more than $318 million in stolen cargo in 2025, with the average stolen shipment value doubling to $336,787 in Q3 2025 from $168,448 in Q3 2024. Losses of this magnitude represent a crippling blow to smaller companies, especially in today’s supply chain landscape of tariff uncertainty, rising operating costs, and labor shortages.
Fraud-related losses are not limited to the cost of stolen merchandise. Shippers, brokers, and 3PLs face higher insurance premiums, damaged brand integrity, and loss of customer trust that impacts the bottom line. Freight fraud also drives up the price of goods for consumers and disrupts the availability of essential products across the country, with nearly half of all reported thefts targeting everyday goods that American families rely on.
Understanding freight fraud
Freight fraud is a complex issue, taking many forms. Fraudsters frequently impersonate legitimate carriers or brokers, cloning legitimate carrier credentials and leaving shippers liable for missing freight. Similarly, bad actors may forge or alter documents to misrepresent equipment or insurance coverage. Double brokering — when a brokered load is illegally passed off to another carrier — is a growing problem, often leaving shippers in the dark about who has possession of their freight.
As freight fraud becomes increasingly digital, data obtained through cyberattacks (e.g., phishing emails, malware, data breaches) is used to commit fictious pickups and identity theft. For example, bad actors infiltrate dispatch email accounts to book and steal loads. In some cases, brokers believe they’re working with long-standing, compliant carriers until high-value cargo vanishes shortly after pickup.
Fraudsters may also employ sniffing attacks: a digital tool detects GPS devices within a trailer, signifying a high-value shipment, and a jammer blocks the tracker’s signal, leaving the criminals free and clear to steal and relocate the entire trailer and its contents.
As supply chains grow more complex and interconnected, these threats are evolving. Criminals exploit fragmented data, inconsistent checks, and the pressure to move loads against tight deadlines. In many cases, brokers or shippers discover the issue too late — when a load fails to arrive on time or when payment disputes arise.
The big picture shift
As freight fraud continues to rise, industry stakeholders and government allies have taken notice, focusing on creating policies and operational models that mitigate the risk of cargo theft and increase the punishment for offenders. For instance, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025 (CORCA) aims to strengthen law enforcement tools against organized theft, create a national coordination hub within Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to support multiagency investigations, and introduce harsher penalties for cargo theft and the fraudulent movement of goods.
Similarly, the Household Goods Shipping Consumer Protection Act was introduced in January 2025 to restore the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) power to impose civil penalties for unauthorized brokerage activities. The bill also improves regulatory compliance by enforcing regulations requiring a valid principal place of business (i.e., no P.O. boxes) and directs FMCSA to analyze trends and commonalities among companies applying for shipping authority to identify potentially fraudulent operations before they can cause harm.
5-step action plan
With industry associations and the current administration focused on fraud reduction at the big picture level, shippers, brokers, and 3PLs can stay one step ahead of bad actors on the ground by implementing fraud prevention best practices across their organization:
- Layer visibility into carrier vetting. Adopt carrier vetting and fraud prevention solutions that combine FMCSA authority data (e.g., DOT/MC numbers) with historical tracking performance, vehicle identification number (VIN) verification with geo-location, and insurance validation at the point of onboarding.
- Use risk scoring in load assignment. Don’t rely on past relationships. Implement fraud and performance scores from purpose-built software tools into the tendering process to avoid high-risk carriers before a load is booked.
- Automate the fraud response. Establish real-time alerting workflows for route deviations, gaps in location pings, or sudden contact changes — and ensure the team knows how to respond.
- Train transportation teams to recognize red flags. Empower dispatchers and carrier reps to spot unusual tracking patterns, FMCSA profile edits, identity mismatches, or voice-over internet protocol (VoIP)-based driver phones that could be linked to bad actors. Automation covers the breadth of fraud prevention checks and alerts, but focused human oversight solves edge cases.
- Engage with FMCSA tools and reporting. Leverage FMCSA’s updated registration system and complaint portals to verify credentials and report suspicious behavior. The more the industry collaborates, the stronger the shield.
Fighting back with technology
With bad actors increasingly adopting digital strategies to perpetrate freight fraud, companies can no longer rely on manual processes to uncover fraudulent carriers, unauthorized load reassignments, and cargo theft attempts. Today, automation and data intelligence are key to safeguarding every stage of the freight journey. And as fraudsters become more sophisticated, organized, and tech-savvy, shippers, brokers, and 3PLs need to use all the tools at their disposal to strengthen vigilance.
The primary tool in the fight against freight fraud and cargo theft is modern fraud prevention technology. With deep visibility into pre-tender, pre-pickup, and in-transit shipments, companies can make smarter, earlier decisions at the carrier level, maintain a high-performing, compliant carrier network, and elevate operational confidence across the freight journey.
While freight fraud may seem like a runaway train, shippers, brokers, and 3PLs can apply the brakes to safeguard their supply chains and protect margins by adopting data-led fraud prevention strategies, optimizing carrier vetting, enhancing real-time shipment visibility, and empowering transportation teams to recognize and shut down fraudulent activity.
