3PL Summit: Addressing fraud in the industry

“Fraud isn’t a new issue to the industry. Back in 2011, one of the first pieces of legislation I worked on at TIA was the Fighting Fraud in Transportation Act. At that time, it was your traditional double brokering schemes. None of it was nefarious; it just wasn’t a level playing field for brokers in the space. What we see now is a massive criminal enterprise. It’s a well-organized, well-funded enterprise that exploded during the COVID pandemic. We did a fraud data report recently, and our members reported year over year a 600% increase in cargo theft.”

“There’s two different fraud buckets: There’s straight cargo theft, which is pretty self-explanatory. The other bucket is strategic theft where it’s the phishing, cybersecurity, financial theft. We’ve seen fraudulent factoring companies. We’ve seen fraudulent carriers and brokers. As our tactics are changing, their tactics are even more evolving.”

“One thing I’m excited about in ’25, we’re going to start branching out to the state and local levels. There are a lot of things happening on a state level that we as an organization should be an advocate for our members there. We’re going to start tackling these regional issues and get that localized grassroots, grass tops advocacy going on as well.”