The First Steps to Prevent Freight Fraud

What can companies do to reduce cargo theft without a large security budget

Not every organization has a dedicated security team or a six-figure fraud prevention budget. But according to Andrew Wimer of Descartes, two foundational practices can significantly reduce cargo theft and freight fraud risk.

Strengthen carrier verification

The first priority is a disciplined carrier onboarding and identity verification process.

Wimer says companies should establish clear standards for vetting new carriers, especially for high-value shipments, and follow those procedures consistently. Strong verification does not require expensive technology. It requires documented processes, defined risk tolerance, and the discipline to avoid shortcuts.

Maintain visibility after pickup

Verification should not end once a load is tendered.

Wimer recommends monitoring shipments throughout transit and watching for route deviations, communication gaps, or other signs of potential fraud. Maintaining visibility after pickup helps companies identify problems early, when recovery is still possible.

Key takeaway

The most effective cargo security strategies do not always require major investments. Consistent carrier verification and continuous shipment monitoring can help organizations reduce fraud risk while protecting valuable freight.

• Transcript

  Marty Carpenter (00:20.923)
  Andrew Weimer leads transportation management solutions at Andrew, I'm gonna check again. Descartes? Descartes. So it's kind of a Descartes. Okay, I'm just gonna put it in pronunciation. Usually I get those de.

  Andrew Wimer (00:34.978)
  Descartes. Descartes. Yep.

  Marty Carpenter (00:46.625)
  Sorry about that. Let's see. Day cart. So it's like D-A-Y-C-A-R-T. Day cart. Okay, with the hard T at the end. Gotcha. and

  Andrew Wimer (00:47.886)
  You're good.

  Andrew Wimer (00:55.832)
  Yep. Yep.

  Marty Carpenter (01:06.725)
  Okay, sorry, a lot of times I have those in there and I just without them I go with what I think I have. So okay, here we go. Now we're gonna roll. three, two, one. Andrew Weimer leads transportation management solutions at Descartes with a focus on operational excellence in logistics and supply chain. Andrew, thanks so much for being with us today.

  Andrew Wimer (01:11.342)
  Perfect.

  Andrew Wimer (01:28.568)
  Thanks, Marty. Appreciate it. Excited to be here.

  Marty Carpenter (01:30.863)
  Well, let's set the landscape from what you're seeing across shippers, brokers, and carriers. What is it that's changed most in cargo theft and freight fraud over the past say twelve to twenty-four months?

  Andrew Wimer (01:43.806)
  I would say what's changed most is that threft theft has become much more digital and really identity driven. I think historically people imagined, you know, cargo theft as like cutting a seal on a trailer or a container or stealing the trailer outright. But really today, many incidents or fraudulent activity occurs much earlier in the cycle. You know, fake carrier identities, driver impersonation.

  compromised authorities with carriers, spoofed emails, manipulated load tenders reroute a shipments. You know, criminal groups I think have realized that manipulating the process is often much more easier, much lower risk than physically, you know, going to a warehouse or going to a truck stop and stealing the cargo. and they're exploiting that much quicker, much more

  complex ways than, you know, historically before with that physical threat.

  Marty Carpenter (02:45.657)
  Yeah. You know, you mentioned well when people hear cargo theft, they often picture like like you were saying, a stolen trailer. but it sounds like much more of it is is digitally enabled. Now, is that a matter of making it more scalable for the bad guys that they can they can sort of do more damage more quickly, or is it just like that's a better way to get away with it than sort of the more old fashioned way we might think of cargo theft?

  Andrew Wimer (02:51.971)
  Mm-hmm.

  Andrew Wimer (03:09.432)
  Probably both. you know, a lot of the twofold, I guess doing it at scale, absolutely, 'cause you can manipulate, you know, multiple carriers at once and reroute shipments, much easier. but also too, not having to be physically present, like, you know

  There's a lot of cargo theft that happens from operations overseas, so you don't actually have to be at a warehouse or at anywhere in the US to actually steal the cargo. You can be at an office or at home, you know, stealing identities and manipulating the tracking information, manipulating the the operations of a carrier, you know, from anywhere, which makes it much more enticing and easy to to do for fraudsters.

  Marty Carpenter (03:54.96)
  Supply chains involve a lot of handoffs and that's where variables come into play. And I think about those old like action movies where someone would handcuff a briefcase full of cash or some other important item to their to their actual arm to transport it somewhere to to minimize the handoffs essentially. Where do bad actors most often exploit gaps today?

  Andrew Wimer (04:15.63)
  the gaps that are exploited for sure are at the the vetting and the vetting, but also at like the tender acceptance period from the from the shipper or from the broker. I think fraudsters tend to target moments when there's urgency with the shipment,

  There's fragmentation or with shippers or brokers or three PLs with limited verification on carrier identity or understanding, you know, having a thorough vetting process of who they're doing business with. you know, onboarding a carrier, transferring a load, changing routing instructions, after hours dispatching activity. Those are all different areas of handoffs and where exceptions can occur.

  And you know, those all these different independent parties that are touching the freight, you know, from the the shipper to the broker to, you know, the person loading the truck at the warehouse or at the dock, you know, a lot of these different people are moving quickly. There's fail points, and attackers I think look for places where trust has been assumed, people assume d due diligence has happened on a on a different handoff point. I mean that's I think where the the gaps come into play.

  Marty Carpenter (05:38.203)
  So as we're talking about these handoff points, that leads us to carrier or driver legitimacy checks. What are the most important signals companies should use to validate a carrier or a driver? And what are the common mistakes that create openings for fraud?

  Andrew Wimer (05:54.615)
  I think the biggest common mistake is assuming one checkpoint is sufficient. The strongest programs and the most thorough shippers of brokers and three PLs don't rely on a single signal of validation and verification. You know, they verify across multiple dimensions. You can carrier history, their authority status, you know, contact consistency, like is that

  person I'm talking to actually been with that company for a while or they bouncing around from different carriers. device location patterns meaning, you know, is that carrier

  That I'm trying to tender the shipment for in you know the southwest of the country. Have they ever hauled shipments in the southwest? Or has their their historical movement always been in the northeast, right? If they're accepting a shipment that has nothing to do with their tended or typical routes, you know, that's a that's a indicator of something I need to look more into. and then also, you know, are they overbooked on capacity? Meaning we understand how many trucks that that carrier may have in their fleet.

  You know, there's different tools out there that expose how many of those vehicles or by carriers vehicles are being utilized by other customers or other other shippers or brokers. So then saying, hey, they only have a hundred trucks in their fleet, but I'm showing that there's 120 active shipments that are being monitored of this carrier, something odd is going on. so I think making sure that not only are you doing due diligence on the initial vetting.

  and understanding the carrier behavior up front, but then also looking at post pickup and any inconsistencies with tracking, you know, route deviation, oddities with communication gaps, maybe spoofed tracking data, things like that. So there's a holistic view of pretender to post-tender compliance and vetting and monitoring.

  Marty Carpenter (07:54.342)
  You bring up a number of things that could be red flags at that point. I want to talk about in transit red flags. What are the earliest warning signs that a shipment may be compromised and what should the response playbook be when those alerts are triggered?

  Andrew Wimer (08:08.767)
  usually I think the earliest signals are behavior with with tracking. unexpected route deviations, right? You have you're going from point A to point B, and for whatever reason the driver's going off-route. communication changes. So if you had great communication with that carrier through the tendering process, through the dispatching process, even through pickup, but then all of a sudden communication's fallen off. It that's that's a red flag.

  if there's pressure that's being put on by the carrier to bypass different procedures that you may have in place or SOPs that are in place, just, you know, creating unnecessary urgency. that's also a concern or a red flag. you know, requests for delivery, changes or due dates or changing of appointment times that are that seem a little bit odd, not just running one hour late, but trying to shift delivery to, you know, multiple days into the future. and then

  delayed or I'd say inconsistent behaviors between systems and and driver activity, meaning, you know, my tracking is looking great on whatever platform I'm using for tracking, but you know, I'm actually talking to this driver, they're telling me that they're in a completely different location than what the the solution I'm using to track them is telling me. I think companies should have a very

  clear escalation playbook to answer the second half of your question. so operations seem to know exactly you know who to notify and how quickly to act. you know I think the worst response is just assuming that it's gonna be okay or that you know this oddity or anomaly is is no big deal and then waiting until the next morning you come in and see it's too late.

  Marty Carpenter (09:52.452)
  It does seem like a red flag if the tracking shows you the drivers here and he says he's somewhere else, I can see how that would be fairly alarming. You know, lots of companies have tracking, but they still get hit. What's the difference between, hey, we can see the load and we can prevent loss?

  Andrew Wimer (09:57.55)
  Yeah.

  Andrew Wimer (10:11.263)
  I think the biggest thing is don't assume visibility equals trust. Like that is not those are not connected by any means. A lot of companies, to your point, have visibility tools, but visibility alone isn't preventing fraud. It is a signal of security of what's going on with the shipment. You know, knowing where a load was or is doesn't necessarily tell you you know it was the pickup legitimate, were the credentials compromise with that.

  Carrier mean the credentials with their telemax provider or the GPS, CLD provider, or were the the delivery instructions manipulated in some way. You know, but prevention really requires context, verification, not just location data. I think security is really about validating the chain of custody throughout that shipment lifecycle, and not just tracking movement, making sure that, hey,

  Does the movement make sense? Are there signals that are surfacing from the visibility solution of manipulated data or oddities with data? you know, making sure that we're using those signals proactively while the shipment's in motion before just assuming that's gonna be delivering just fine.

  Marty Carpenter (11:26.053)
  So if a load is suspected as stolen or fraudulently diverted, what should companies do in the first twenty four hours to increase the odds of recovery and reduce downstream damage?

  Andrew Wimer (11:30.201)
  Mm-hmm.

  Andrew Wimer (11:38.096)
  I mean speed is key, kind of going back to what I just mentioned about don't wait till the next morning. You know, those first several hours when you surface the hey fraudulent activity may be occurring on this load, that's critical time. you know, companies should immediately verify the facts, preserving communication trails that they have with that carrier from you know onboarding through tendering through, you know, vetting, and then ultimately tracking and have s systems of record of that data stored and then

  Obviously notify internal stakeholders and a lot of our customers in the 3PL broker space have compliance teams and carrier management teams that would, you know, step in at this point, engage local law enforcement, relative parties quickly. you know, sometimes fraud signals surface before the ship bin is even picked up. So then engaging that shipper saying, hey, don't load that truck that's being sent in. We're sending in a different truck. Here's the VIN, here's the driver, make sure that you know it matches correctly.

  I'd say avoid delays and avoid assuming that it'll get handled in a couple of hours because you know, it happens very, very quickly.

  Marty Carpenter (12:46.939)
  We gotta recognize it quickly and act quickly. I wanna talk about information sharing and incident reporting. How important is it in your mind for the industry to share fraud patterns and incident data? And what are the practical barriers to doing that right now?

  Andrew Wimer (13:03.743)
  it's very critical. you know, I was at a a conference last week actually all about fraud. and one of the presenters, you know, put all the different companies, including my own, up on screen saying, Hey, here's everyone's doing great things in the space trying to prevent fraud. We need to make sure that we're sharing that data and coming together. And this was actually a consortium. It wasn't you know, hey, here's what how great we are. It was hey, how can we help each other ensure that you know we're

  sharing the data across the platforms where there's a a consistent I'll use a database it's not technically data but it's a con a consistent platform that you know has fraudulent activity report on a certain carrier so that you know we're all aware of what's going on. I think you know fraud groups can share their own tactics between you know bad actors relatively quickly. we need to be able to do that as well. We need to make sure that

  Yeah, we have consistent fraud indicators that it is shared, suspicious identity patterns that are shared and just learnings that we have so we're all having software and and tools that help our customers.

  Marty Carpenter (14:13.529)
  Yeah, you really just want to compete against your competitors, but when you've got bad actors out there, sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your friend. And so you've got to work together and share that data. let's talk about security versus compliance versus resilience. Descartes also plays a cust you play a customs regulatory compliance and and broader logistics workflow. Like you're you're in that space. What do you see overlap? for example, like how does compliance processes and clean data help reduce

  Andrew Wimer (14:35.728)
  Yeah.

  Marty Carpenter (14:42.789)
  fraud and and theft risk.

  Andrew Wimer (14:45.708)
  I think there's pretty significant ri overlap. You know, both compliance and fraud depend on trusted data, verified identities, consistent workflows. when organizations improve data quality, improve onboarding controls, documentation accuracy, shipment visibility, you know, they're not just supporting, you know, compliance, they're also reducing opportunity, I think, for for fraud in general and cargo

  versions. I think modern logistics security is increasingly tied to just a a digital trust across the supply chain ecosystem.

  Marty Carpenter (15:28.101)
  Yeah. I wanna wrap up on this. I want your advice for resource constrained teams. So for say a a midsize shipper or a three PL that doesn't have a big security budget, what are, I don't know, the top two or three changes that would most reduce cargo theft or freight fa fraud risk for them?

  Andrew Wimer (15:49.617)
  Let's say first strengthening carrier and identity verification processes, especially with new relationships with carriers and high value shipments. You cannot underestimate or bypass strong vetting and onboarding. That is that is key. And that does not have to cost a lot of money to do that. That is a documented, disciplined process in SOP that you come up with that says, hey, here's our risk tolerance and here's what we are.

  making sure that we have covered for a carrier to qualify to do business with us, that then you stick to that and you don't divert from that. So you're protecting yourself. then second, I think is just cross-system visibility, you know, so that back to that layered approach, ensuring that, you know, just because you did a great job vetting and monitoring that carrier before you tender them the shipment, you're also ensuring that you're keeping you know your your antennas up while the shipment's in transit.

  in identifying any risk opportunities or risk f fraudulent activity, I should say, while that shipment's in motion. so that, you know, you can catch them early, like we mentioned before.

  Marty Carpenter (16:56.675)
  Andrew Weimer leads Transportation Management Solutions at Descartes. Andrew, thanks so much for your work fighting back against organized retail crime broadly and cargo theft, and thanks for joining us today.

  Andrew Wimer (17:07.568)
  Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it.

  Marty Carpenter (17:09.563)
  All right, that's it for this episode of Retail's Most Wanted. Thanks to our presenting sponsor, LVT. And don't forget to hit that subscribe or follow button so you can catch each new episode. We drop one every two weeks. You can also follow us on X, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Thanks for being with us, everyone, and as always, keep up the good fight.

  Okay. Andrew, what'd you think?