Statewide Iowa — Three men from Miami are under arrest, accused of stealing nine million dollars worth of frozen beef and pork from meatpacking plants in Iowa and five other states. Terry Wagner, the sheriff in Lancaster County, Nebraska, says his department started connecting the dots after finding empty semi trailers that had been stolen from a Grand Island beef packer.
Investigators from the Lancaster County, Nebraska sheriff’s office and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have identified 45 thefts so far.
It was a highly sophisticated organized criminal enterprise according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The Nebraska sheriff says in many instances it appears the men drove into an area in a semi tractor and hooked it up to a trailer that had been loaded with frozen meat.
The sheriff told reporters in Lincoln, Nebraska that federal investigators used electronic surveillance to track three semi tractor trailers with more than half a million dollars worth of stolen meat to Florida last Thursday.
On September 1st, 100-thousand dollars worth of pork was stolen from the JBS plant in Ottumwa, but there’s been no official confirmation that case is among the 45 meat thefts identified by the Nebraska sheriff.
