What do you do with a truckload of black market blueberries?
That’s the riddle facing Det. George Gallant and his partner Staff. Sgt Emilio Evangelista of the Hamilton police department after the theft of an estimated $100,000 worth of blueberries and other assorted fruits.
The berry thieves are in a rough patch if they can’t sell them quickly, police say.
“It’s perishable,” Gallant said. “It’s not like you can just leave them in a warehouse for six months.”
It’s possible the thief or thieves have good contacts in the fruit stand and restaurant world, Gallant said.
“It’s all contacts, really,” Gallant said.
It’s doubtful they plan to move them across the border, since they’d need permits, Gallant said. It’s also possible they’re making them into jam, he said.
Police say the blueberry bandit or bandits gained access to a commercial refrigeration truck parked at 555 Seaman Dr. in Stoney Creek and then drove the truck and trailer into the Toronto area.
The truck’s been recovered but the trailer and berries remain at large.
The blueberries were stolen sometime between 3 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. on Sunday.
Local thieves have lifted truckloads of televisions and washer/dryers over the past few months, but this is the first time in memory they’ve picked berries, Gallant said.
“I wouldn’t say it’s very frequent,” Gallant said of the berry theft. “It’s a heckuva lot of berries to get rid of.”
It’s possible the thieves just stole an available truck and found out later they were in a jam, with perishable loot, Gallant said.
“[Sometimes] they’ll take the trailer and find out what’s in the trailer later,” Gallant said.
Back in September 2006, thieves near Abbotsford, B.C. stole an entire blueberry patch, or 20,000 bushes worth about $75,000.
Abbotsford police speculated that skyrocketing berry prices were behind the illegal harvest of blueberry bushes. They had just been delivered to a farm and had yet to be planted.
“I’ve been here 13 years and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of blueberries being stolen,” Constable Casey Vinet of the Abbotsford police said at the time to Agence France Presse. “Sometimes folks are caught stealing a few stalks of corn for personal use, but never an entire field.”
“We don’t have any suspects,” he added. “But a blueberry patch would be pretty hard to fence (sell as stolen goods).”
Marc Sweeney, a blueberry expert with the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture, told AFP at the time that the spoils of “the great blueberry heist” will likely end up on one of several new blueberry farms in the local Fraser Valley. But, it would take almost two years for the young bushes to bear fruit, he added.
Produce thefts can be lucrative, with maple syrup a particularly sweet target.
Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 13 in Trois-Rivieres, Que. for three men who were found guilty in connection with stealing $18 million worth of maple syrup from a warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, Que. between August 2011 and July 2012.
After the maple syrup inventory from the warehouse was found missing, an investigation found barrels of syrup had been drained and replaced with water.
The maple syrup was later seized by police in New Brunswick
Roughly 300 people in the maple syrup industry in Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and the northern U.S. were questioned.
Of particular concern to police in Wisconsin are “cheese pirates,” like the ones who stole a truck carrying 20,000 pounds of cheese in Oak Creek last July.
That semi was hauling a reported $46,000 worth of cheese, according to a NBC affiliate.
“The cheese pirates are back at it again,” Vince Christian, of Wisconsin Cheese Mart, told an NBC26 affiliate. “It’s kind of crazy that cheese is now so valuable people are going off with entire trucks of it.”
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