FBI Nabs Suspect in Mass. Heist of 33K Pounds of Snow Crabs

Nabbed crab, boosted blueberries, and fleeced fragrance — all allegedly stolen in the same scheme.

A New York man who allegedly stole over 33,000 pounds of frozen snow crab from a Worcester warehouse over the summer and other large shipments, was arrested by the FBI Thursday.

Romoy Forbes, 31, was charged with interstate transportation of stolen goods and conspiracy to commit that offense, according to court records.

Forbes and an unnamed co-conspirator allegedly stole the frozen crab in July by hacking into the email account of a legitimate trucking company and then pretending to be employees of that company.

The Worcester seafood business, which is not named in the court records, had advertised looking for a company to truck the seafood from its warehouse to Jacksonville, Florida.

Forbes’ co-conspirator used a legitimate email address from a real trucking company to arrange the pick up, according to an affidavit signed by an FBI special agent Brendan Retalic.

On July 15, Forbes arrived at the warehouse claiming to be an employee of the trucking company, the affidavit said, appearing to present his real New York ID and phone number to a worker there. Stills from surveillance footage at the warehouse shows Forbes in a hi-viz vest and driving a large red truck that didn’t have any of his purported company’s logos.

At the same time, his co-conspirator sent a message to the warehouse, from the hacked-trucking company account, letting them know their driver was there. The co-conspirator was told he had to give the company a phone number and photos of the truck for the delivery to be processed, leading the co-conspirator to pass along a phone number, not associated with Forbes, and a photo of a truck that was different from the one Forbes had driven to the warehouse.

“These images did not match the truck that Forbes had driven [to the Worcester warehouse] to retrieve the seafood, but [the employee] was unaware of the discrepancy,” the affidavit said.

After accepting the delivery, the defendant delivered the seafood to a grocery store in Queens, New York, instead of to the customer in Florida, the court documents alleged. The crab was valued at about $325,000.

Forbes had pictures of the allegedly stolen crab sitting at the Queens business on his phone, the affidavit said.

But apparently, Forbes’ crimes didn’t start or stop there, according to the FBI.

Forbes also allegedly stole a shipment of blueberries that he sold for $4,000 in June, before the seafood heist, and 14 pallets of cologne valued at more than $400,000 in late July, the charging documents said.

The affidavit noted that Forbes and his co-conspirator used a similar scheme of hacking into a legitimate trucking company’s email to arrange the pick ups.

Forbes’ arrest is a part of a larger trend of seafood thefts hitting New England. In November, about $20,000 worth of oysters were stolen from an aquaculture spot in Maine. Then, the following month, the Herald reported on two separate incidents at a Taunton facility, where two large seafood shipments were allegedly stolen just ten days apart. The culprits of that shellfish heist, which involved hundreds of thousands of dollars product, reportedly used spoof emails from a real carrier company to pull off the crime.

Forbes will make his initial court appearance in New York before appearing in the federal court in Boston at a later date, the FBI said.

The interstate transportation of stolen goods charge comes with a maximum penalty of ten years behind bars, while the conspiracy charge could lead to up to five years in prison.

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