The Beer Theft Enterprise

Originally published in “Scheming on a Thing” in Triple Canopy, Issue 29: Our Bad, 10/28/24

Late one night last year I was taking out the trash in the side yard of my house in Queens, minding my business, sorting through recycling and lightly humming to myself. I heard a noise. I peeked over a bush at the train tracks across the street. Two men were emerging from a big hole in the iron fence that divided a parking lot from the big CSX freight trains. The men were stacking boxes. I moved to get a better angle and drew my iPhone. Then my motion-sensing porch light activated, backlighting me like an off-off Broadway song-and-dance man. Suddenly, I was the one on stage. The guys turned and stared; my eyes bugged. They scowled, dropped the boxes, and dashed to a BMW I hadn’t noticed idling nearby. The getaway car squealed off into the night.

I drew a breath and waited. The porch light clicked off. I could see the stack of boxes and the hole in the fence. I waited for the bad boys to come ripping back, guns blazing, but they never returned. It got real quiet. I wondered if I should call the police. If it was worth it. I’d just moved to the neighborhood and didn’t know the ins and outs; the rules of the streets. Glendale is on the edge of Ridgewood and known for a very Blue Lives Matter, NIMBYist surveillance-state culture. What should I do? I thought. Do I want to integrate with this culture? I said what the heck and called the police. It took them an hour to show up and I drank two beers in the meantime. Around midnight, two stocky cops pulled up. They stood around, idly toeing the boxes. I emerged from the leafy shadows with my hands up.

“Hey fellas,” I said in a high-pitched voice, not taking any chances. They were a little startled to see me, but not too startled, like maybe this happens all the time. I looked at the boxes and realized they were full of beer—it was a huge stack of Corona beer.

“You called us?” one cop asked.

“I saw it all,” I said, “I even filmed it.” I showed them my shaky iPhone video: the hooded thieves, the smoky getaway car.

“Cool,” they said, “Mind if we zoom in?”

I gave them my phone. I was integrating pretty nicely. We were almost having a good time.

“So what’s the deal, pals?” I asked. The cop handed the phone back to me.

“There is no deal. We can’t do nothing with this beer.”

“But it came from the train,” I said. “Right there.”

“Nah, they won’t take it back. This is tainted beer.”

“Looks fine to me?”

“Nah, this beer is off the wagon. Can’t resell it cause it’s officially stolen. The train company will just file for insurance. Everyone files for insurance. This beer, well, it doesn’t exist anymore.”

“So what are we gonna do?” I asked, a bit too eagerly.

“You want it?”

“What? All this stuff?” I couldn’t believe it. Two cops offering me a pallet of Corona at midnight in Glendale, Queens.

“Yeah, it’s yours. Finders keepers.”

I hesitated. What kind of trap is this—Corona from a cop? Did I need a lawyer? Or at least a tax attorney? I thought for a moment, then remembered something important: I don’t like Corona. It’d take me years to get through all that Corona. My kids would be grown, in their twenties, drinking skunked Corona. On top of that, I didn’t want to get involved. The crooks had seen me bright and clear, and no amount or type of beer was worth getting shot up in a drive-by. They could’ve been watching us at that very moment for all I knew. So I told the cops cheers and thanks but no thanks and we waved our goodbyes. The beer sat there for a few more hours and by morning, it was gone.

I thought about my experience over breakfast. I did a little research. Turns out the train line is nicknamed the “Pizza and Beer” line for all the baking flour and Mexican beer it pushes out to the boroughs. There are lots of robberies on the line, and a spate of them lately. Funny, I thought, and thought nothing more about it.

Flash forward to Wednesday, April 3, 2024. It’s about 11:00 p.m. and I’m sitting around, and guess what pops up in my newsfeed? Well, they caught the guy. Earlier that day, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment accusing Jose Cesari of “being the mastermind of … the ‘Beer Theft Enterprise.’” Eight Bronx men had been arrested. The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, said:

For years, the Beer Theft Enterprise has operated brazenly, allegedly breaking into rail yards and beverage distribution facilities throughout the Northeast and filling U-Haul box trucks to the brim with cases of beer. That dangerous and disruptive conduct—sometimes allegedly accompanied by the threat of violence—has left several beverage distribution and railroad companies ailing. Today’s arrests reinforce that the Beer Theft Enterprise’s staggering thefts will not be tolerated in the Southern District of New York.

James E. Dennehy, then the FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Newark Field Office, weighed in:

Train heists harken back to the days of the Wild West and gunslingers riding horses, stealing loot from rail cars. The romanticized image has nothing to do with the modern-day criminals we allege took part in a theft ring in New Jersey, New York, and beyond that targeted rail yards and beverage distribution centers. They used the cover of night to cut through fencing, off-load pallets of beer, and sell off the stolen goods, costing the victims’ companies hundreds of thousands of dollars. The alleged ringleader Cesari often used a weapon during the robberies. Our team of agents and investigators working on this case has done an outstanding job bringing these alleged thieves’ crime spree to the end of the line.

Wow, I thought, I dodged a bullet, a real bullet. Those guys were kind of smart. Based on what I’d learned, though, they didn’t need to steal the beer at all. They just needed to touch it. Like a game of tag. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d played right into their hands: The goody-two-shoes calls the cops, the cops report the theft, and then the beer is legally abandoned. I got the sense the FBI was being a bit histrionic. I mean, it’s just beer, right?