The crab caper: Thieves steal 3,000 pounds of frozen snow crab in overnight Philadelphia heist as cargo thefts climb

“It’s going to fall back on the consumers eventually,” Keith Lewis, vice president of operations at cargo-theft prevention firm Verisk CargoNet, told The Washington Post earlier this year.

Thieves make off with two pallets of frozen crab

The overnight theft happened around 4:57 a.m. on Oct. 27, along Island Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia, according to NBC10 Philadelphia.

Police say the driver, Marty Muriuki, was sleeping inside his truck when he heard movement and discovered six people removing boxes of frozen snow crab from the trailer. “As I was dreaming, I felt the shaking and I wake up and I think ‘uh oh, I have some company,’” he told NBC10. “And, I look back and I saw four, five cars.”

When he got out to confront the thieves, they managed to chase him away. “I was not trying to be a hero,” he told the outlet. The thieves reportedly fled in several vehicles, including a gray Ford F-150 pickup truck and a gray Dodge Caravan.

Police are investigating, but the suspects’ haul is part of a wider pattern of food cargo thefts in the region. Earlier in October, thieves reportedly stole $40,000 worth of frozen ground beef from a tractor-trailer in Northeast Philadelphia. Another robbery in September involved Black Angus beef ribs.

Police haven’t said how much the snow crab was worth, and without knowing the exact product and grade, it’s not exactly easy to put a price on 3,000 pounds of it.