More than 55,000 Kitkats valued at $250,000 stolen without leaving a trace

Chocolate bars are highly valued, but none like the 55,000 Kitkat that disappeared weeks ago in California. Its owner, Danny Taing, founder of Bokksu, a company dedicated to marketing Japanese food products in the United States, must have received an order with these chocolates to sell them later.. But the shipment has not arrived.

The story of his robbery has been picked up by The New York Times. The American newspaper has confirmed, through Taing himself, that the income he intended to obtain with this order was 250,000 dollars (close to 230,000 euros).. This amount is so high because these are types of Kitkat that are only sold in Japan.. Melon, matcha latte or daifuku mochi are some of the flavors that were in the order and that can become especially valuable among those who collect them.

The business has been truncated as it is the protagonist of a “strategic theft”, as the New York newspaper has described it.. The package left Japan perfectly and crossed the entire Pacific to a warehouse in California. There they only had to be transported to another ship located in New Jersey, owned by Taing.

For the transfer to the final point, Taing hired the transportation company of businessman Shane Black, who in turn entrusted the work to another company called HCH Trucking, where an employee named Tristan worked.. Everything seemed in order. Tristan even assured in an email that the order was on its way and that it was crossing the entire country to its destination.

However, something started to seem strange to Black when Tristan told him that he had had a breakdown and that if it wasn't fixed, he would have to go back to the starting point.. There were less than 400 miles to New Jersey and it was already a long way from California.. “If the truck was in good condition to travel the 3,862 kilometers back to California, why couldn't it travel less than 640 kilometers?” Black told The New York Times.

The businessman then contacted the company Tristan worked for, where they confirmed that they did not have any employees with that name, so Tristan finally confessed that he was a fraud: “I am a scammer and the owner of HCH has no nothing to do with this.”

After trying to negotiate with him, without success, Tristan acknowledged that the order had never left California but that it was in another warehouse, about 50 kilometers from the original.. Black then contacted that ship, where the cargo had already been for two weeks, but they denied his removal because his name did not appear but that of a certain Harry Centa: “Without proof that you are the true owner and without payment of storage, we cannot release the cargo.

Black then tried to call Taing to obtain proof that he was the owner of the shipment.. But it was too late because the founder of Bokksu had filed a complaint about the theft.

For the moment, Taing considers the Kitkat lost. He cannot obtain them in any way and, in addition, he has told The New York Times that he could not sell them either because the cargo has not been properly refrigerated.. According to the newspaper, he has been the victim of a “fictitious collection”, a type of cybercrime in which an attempt is made to extort someone through a “hostage cargo” that disappears if the thief's demands are not met.