Guy Fieri has been feeding America for decades through his restaurants and TV shows.
But the celebrity chef just learned a hard lesson about doing business in today’s world.
And Guy Fieri got ripped off in one scheme that shows how vulnerable American businesses really are.
Most Americans know Guy Fieri as the spiky-haired host who brings us comfort food through Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
But Fieri is also a serious businessman who co-founded Santo Tequila with rock legend Sammy Hagar.
The brand was doing well until last November when something straight out of a Hollywood heist movie happened to them.
Two semi-trucks worth over $1 million simply vanished into thin air
Santo Tequila follows the same routine for every shipment from their distillery in western Mexico.
The tequila gets shipped to Laredo, Texas, clears customs, then heads to their warehouse in Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
This particular shipment contained 24,000 bottles worth over $1 million, loaded onto two different semi-trucks.
At first, everything seemed normal.
Santo Spirits CEO Dan Butkus got the usual updates from their logistics company.
"The product was due on Wednesday to our warehouse in Pennsylvania and on Thursday morning the logistics company told us there was a water pump cooler problem with the truck, it’s just gonna be a slight delay," Butkus explained to 60 Minutes.¹
That "slight delay" turned into every business owner’s nightmare.
What happened next sounds like something out of a movie, but it’s becoming frighteningly common in American shipping.
Santo’s logistics company did what thousands of businesses do every day – they hired a trucking company to move the product. That trucking company then subcontracted the job through something called "double brokering."
Here’s where it gets scary: criminals had set up bogus trucking operations that looked completely legitimate on paper. These weren’t some fly-by-night operations – they had professional-looking websites, email addresses, even customer service numbers.
The fake companies bid on the job and won it. They hired real drivers who had no idea they were working for crooks.
When those drivers picked up the tequila in Texas, they got directions to deliver it to California, not Pennsylvania. The drivers thought they were doing legitimate work for a legitimate company.
Back at Santo headquarters, everything looked normal because the criminals were sending regular updates and GPS coordinates showing the trucks heading northeast toward Pennsylvania. All fake.
In reality, the tequila had already been unloaded at criminal-controlled locations in California.
Guy Fieri couldn’t believe what he was hearing when he got the call
When Fieri learned about the missing shipment, his first reaction was pure disbelief.
"I said, ‘Elaborate on lost.’ He says, ‘Well, they disappeared.’ I said, ‘Well, wait, wait, wait, is this a hijacking?’ I said, ‘Are the drivers okay?’ ‘Cause all my mind goes to is ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s what I’m thinking is happening," Fieri recalled.²
"And he said, ‘No, no, no, no, the trucks, it– they were appropriated but we don’t know where they are.’ I’m like, it– it’s not a needle in a haystack. I mean, this is a semi-tractor truck. My mind is swimming in exactly how do you lose, you know, that many thousands of bottles of tequila?"
That’s exactly what every American business owner would be thinking.
How do two massive semi-trucks just disappear in the digital age when everything is supposedly tracked and monitored?
The answer reveals something deeply troubling about how vulnerable our shipping system really is.
These cybercriminals exploited the internet-dependent logistics network that American businesses rely on every day.
They used fake communications and GPS spoofing to steal over $1 million worth of product while keeping everyone believing the shipment was on track.
According to Keith Lewis, a former cop who runs operations for Verisk CargoNet, this type of cargo theft "happens multiple times a day."³
The theft forced Santo Tequila to lay off employees
The impact on Santo Tequila was immediate and painful.
Making matters worse, all 24,000 bottles contained a special tequila that Fieri and Hagar had been promoting for the holiday season – a batch that took three and a half years to make.
"It’s not like we’re sitting on huge reserves," Fieri explained. "We can’t fill the shelves. We had to lay off players. You know, and that’s the hardest thing? Knowing how many people are counting on you. So yeah, it hurt all the way around."⁴
This is what cargo theft really means for American businesses – it’s not just missing inventory, it’s lost jobs and damaged livelihoods.
Eventually, the Los Angeles Police Department Cargo Theft Unit tracked down one of the drivers who had been directed to deliver the tequila to an industrial site in the San Fernando Valley.
That tip led them to a warehouse in Southeast Los Angeles where they recovered 11,000 bottles of the stolen tequila.
But the other truck and its thousands of bottles remain missing and probably never will be found.
Santo Tequila was able to inspect and sell the recovered bottles, but they still lost roughly half their shipment to these criminals.
Guy Fieri went public to warn other business owners
Fieri didn’t have to talk about getting ripped off on national television.
Most business owners would quietly handle the insurance claims and move on.
But Fieri chose to go on 60 Minutes to warn other entrepreneurs about this growing threat.
"It’s not a thing I wanna go and brag about, like, ‘Hey, we got ripped off.’ That’s not fun. But if it can happen to us with what I believe were pretty strong measures and security and awareness and, you know, communication and, you know, the way we do business," Fieri explained.⁵
"And to get ripped off for two full semi-truck loads of tequila in today’s age, then everybody’s vulnerable."
He’s absolutely right.
If a well-established brand with experienced logistics partners can lose two trucks worth of product to cybercriminals, what chance do smaller businesses have?
Look, this exposes a massive vulnerability in America’s economy
The Santo Tequila heist reveals something terrifying about doing business in America today.
Investigators say this type of remote cargo theft – where criminals redirect shipments entirely online – has spiked 1,200% in the last four years.⁶
Keith Lewis points out the fundamental problem: "We don’t do business face-to-face anymore. We don’t have the hand-to-hand transactions. We’re doing business by PDF file, by rate confirmations."⁷
These cybercriminals can operate from anywhere in the world – investigators believe the tequila heist was orchestrated by a criminal gang operating out of Armenia, 7,000 miles away from where the tequila was stolen.
Our entire economy depends on trucking companies and digital logistics networks that can apparently be hijacked by anyone with basic computer skills and criminal intent.
Small business owners who built their companies through decades of hard work can lose everything to faceless cybercriminals they’ll never meet.
According to Lewis, U.S. businesses lost more than $230 million to cargo theft last year alone – and "100%" of those losses get passed on to consumers through higher prices.⁸
Guy Fieri deserves credit for using his platform to shine a light on this threat instead of just taking the loss quietly.
American entrepreneurs need to know they’re operating in an environment where even sophisticated security measures can’t guarantee their products will reach their destination.
The folks who built this country through free enterprise shouldn’t have to worry about criminal organizations stealing their life’s work through digital trickery.
But that’s exactly what’s happening, and Guy Fieri’s story proves nobody is safe.
¹ Sharyn Alfonsi, "How thieves stole 24,000 bottles of Guy Fieri’s tequila in a highway heist," CBS News, October 6, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Ibid.