The great modern train robbery: Thieves steal $200 million a year

The train was sitting just outside a depot in Memphis when the bandits made their move.

Emerging from a black Kia Soul under the cover of darkness, the three men clambered on top of CSX Corp. railcars.

They broke the container locks and grabbed more than $20,000 of items, including women’s clothing destined for a Belk department store, Lazer Blocks toys and two cases of Fre non-alcoholic chardonnay.

The thieves filled their vehicle and hid the rest in a nearby wooded area, planning to come back for it later.

The November theft was the type railyards had experienced dozens of times over the past few years, but this time, AI-powered cameras were being used to watch the heist.

A task force focused on railroad crime leapt into action.

The team — led by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation with the assistance of federal, state and local agencies, along with the Tennessee National Guard and CSX’s own police force — launched a plane that tracked the vehicle for 11 miles.

Officers swooped in a few hours later as one of the perpetrators was unloading boxes of stolen goods, and two other men were arrested separately over the following days, according to police records reviewed by Bloomberg News .

Train robberies are a trope of cowboy Westerns, associated with 19th-century outlaws like Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Reno Gang.

But the modern incarnation is largely a product of the pandemic, with theft quadrupling from levels seen before 2020.

Once lockdowns began, criminal gangs that had relied on the drug trade saw their supply chains disrupted just as stay-at-home requirements boosted demand for physical goods.

So the gangs pivoted to theft, focused on the rail hubs located in urban bottlenecks including Chicago, Los Angeles and Memphis.

Criminals nabbed more than $200 million of goods from 75,000 thefts on US freight rail networks in 2025, according to an industry group that represents CSX, BNSF Railway Co. and Union Pacific Corp., among others.

In January last year, a BNSF train was robbed of about 1,985 pairs of unreleased Nikes worth more than $440,000, according to a filing in US District Court in Phoenix.