Trailers containing millions of dollars worth of Tesla car and home batteries have allegedly been stolen straight from loading docks at the company’s Nevada facilities at least 11 times since last December, according to sheriff’s records obtained by WIRED.
“It’s an epidemic right now,” says Storey County Sheriff’s Detective Sam Hatley, who has been investigating the Tesla cases.
Three men suspected of carrying out one of the heists were arrested in January and charged with felony possession of stolen property. But the broader spate of cargo thefts plaguing Elon Musk’s car company are still under investigation and have not been previously reported.
Hatley tells WIRED the incidents documented in the sheriff's records reflect only a portion of the problem. Investigators are tracking a total of 17 alleged cargo thefts this year involving Tesla and other businesses in Storey County, though Hatley declined to say how many involved the car maker specifically. One alleged operation that targeted Tesla also struck battery recycler Redwood Materials. These figures may still be an undercount, Hatley adds, because companies are sometimes reluctant to disclose that their products have been stolen.
Transportation industry researchers estimated last year that shipping thefts in the US roughly doubled from 2022 to 2024 and are now collectively costing companies nearly $18 million a day, which could arguably translate to higher prices for shoppers. Electronic components have been a frequent target, according to the theft prevention consultancy Verisk CargoNet.
What particularly worries law enforcement and the cargo industry is the rise of so-called strategic thefts, like what Tesla allegedly has experienced. These operations don’t involve thieves snatching goods from an unattended trailer at a public rest stop. Organized groups have instead found ways to exploit gaps in security protocols at the world’s most valuable automaker, including using fake IDs and loose relationships the company has with the truckers who transport its products.
WIRED learned of the incidents by requesting emergency dispatch records from Storey County, where a Tesla battery factory employs an estimated 12,000 people, making it by far the area's largest employer. Roughly 2 percent of the county’s emergency incidents last year originated from the 5.4 million square feet so-called gigafactory, which Tesla operates in partnership with Panasonic. (A substantial number of the calls, though, appear to be butt dials to 911.)
A Tesla associate manager told investigators that some of the initial thefts stemmed from failing to adhere to basic security protocols, according to sheriff’s reports. The car maker has since tightened its procedures, including beginning to verify the identity of drivers at the factory gate, according to sheriff’s records. “It’s definitely helping,” Hatley says. Thefts are “happening, but not as prolifically.”
Tesla, the associate manager named in the reports, and Redwood Materials did not respond to requests for comment.
Pilfering Powerwalls
The first of the recent cases took place in December and involved two trailers each filled with over $475,000 worth of Powerwall 3 residential battery systems, which were taken from a Tesla property by a dodgy logistics carrier, according to sheriff’s reports. Authorities recovered the trailers empty about 500 miles away in Southern California.
Tesla's security team later found some of the Powerwalls for sale online and notified authorities. The products can't be activated when marked as stolen, according to investigators, so there's not much to gain from buying them. In another case, an auto parts dealer in Northern California told Tesla and law enforcement that someone had offered to sell them at a discount what they suspected to be stolen car batteries, which investigators later confirmed had been.
Tesla reported one additional alleged theft in December and nine more in January. That included a January 19 incident involving another trailer containing 123 Powerwalls. It was destined for a Tesla facility in Hayward, California but never made it there. Sheriff’s reports state that the semi-truck and the company whose driver came to pick up the trailer were not licensed for interstate operations. A freight broker had awarded the contract to transport the trailer to an illegitimate carrier, according to sheriff’s reports.
Two additional trailers, each containing about $500,000 worth of Powerwalls, were taken over the next four days. Both trailers were found based on their GPS location history but one was recovered empty, investigators state in their reports. The other was found with all of its cargo at a gas station 18 miles away from Tesla’s factory. Detectives placed a GPS tracking device on it with the intent to nab the thieves coming back for it, and they informed Tesla of the location and their plan. But Tesla employees came to pick up the trailer anyway, and were briefly pulled over by confused deputies. Hatley declined to comment on the mishap.
The following week in January, two more trailers were stolen, but they were equipped with built-in GPS trackers that remained on (in other cases, authorities say the alleged thieves deactivated or discarded them). Both trailers were quickly located nearby, parked with their contents untouched. Tesla picked up one, while officers placed their own GPS tracker on the other.
On January 30, the trailer with the police tracker on it was on the move, and police proceeded to arrest three suspects driving off with it. Prosecutors allege that the three individuals in their 20s—Arashdeep Singh, Deepindeer Singh, and Harman Pal Singh—traveled from California with a forged commercial driver’s license in someone else’s name. Their cases are scheduled for trial in October. Attorneys listed in court papers for two of the defendants did not respond to requests for comment from WIRED.
Some companies and federal lawmakers are pushing new ways to combat cargo theft. Amazon said last month it was using measures like “AI-driven anomaly detection" and “daily carrier screening” to protect its shipments.
Around the same time, the US House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill intended to make it easier to prosecute retail and cargo theft and improve coordination between law enforcement agencies. The measure is now awaiting action in the Senate. “Highly-organized, large-scale retail and cargo thefts have been on the rise, and we need to do more to crack down,” says Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who plans to fight for the bill’s passage. “These crimes create chaos for the business community and raise prices for hardworking American families.”
Masto declined to comment about whether she has been in touch with Tesla about its theft issues. Hatley says he credits the car maker for working cooperatively with him. That's a notable difference from 2018, when Tesla reportedly refused to help the department investigate suspected copper wire theft at the gigafactory. “It’s going to take a concerted effort with carriers and brokers and victims and law enforcement” to get an upper hand on the theft epidemic, he says.
Additional reporting by Aarian Marshall.
