Sometimes, there’s nothing better than an iced cold beer in the summer heat. Other times, there’s nothing more anxiety-inducing than trying to drink 4,496.33 gallons of beer before the police come knocking on your door.
That’s exactly what’s happening this week after Pabst Blue Ribbon made an announcement asking the public for help finding truckloads of beer stolen from a distribution center in Montclair, Calif.
“STOLEN— 40,000lbs of beer,” it posted on Instagram. “We don’t fault you for wanting to brag to your friends how much PBR you have, we just wish you obtained it the honorable way.”
The company gave the thieves a deadline of “18 days and 44 minutes” to return the beer with “no questions asked,” likely a nod to the brand’s 1844 founding (though the company hasn’t confirmed that). It also said it would offer a reward for information.
Montclair police referred Fortune to a press release detailing an investigation into two separate cargo thefts from the Anheuser-Busch distribution center, both occurring on Aug. 17.
The first happened around 10 a.m., when a $45,000 shipment was picked up and never arrived at its Tucson, Ariz. destination. The second happened about an hour later, when a purported subcontracting company used fraudulent documentation to arrange the pickup of roughly $25,000 in Anheuser-Busch and Pabst Blue Ribbon product.
PBR put the tally at 1,602 cases containing 33,984 cans of beer, including 860 cases of 15-packs of 25-ounce PBR cans and 546 cases of 30-packs of 12-ounce cans, plus 196 cases of nonalcoholic Old Milwaukee. The combined loss, including pallets and packaging, came in at just over 40,000 pounds. Because some online have pointed to Pabst’s social posts as causing some confusion about whether the whole thing was a marketing stunt, Montclair police clarified: “We are working this case, but no trucks were stolen. Just the cargo.”
However, this is far from the biggest beer heist ever: In 2010, thieves broke into a storage facility in Germany’s Rhineland during World Cup celebrations and hauled off 10 truckloads of beer over a long weekend—about 300,000 liters, worth an estimated $3 million.
No questions asked doesn’t mean no legal action taken
Pickups arranged with fake paperwork, sometimes called fictitious or strategic cargo theft, aren’t new. Fortune reported on the tactic a decade ago, when fraud accounted for roughly one in 10 cargo thefts and food was the most attractive target, since it can be resold through unscrupulous distributors with no serial numbers to trace.
The method has only gotten more sophisticated. This summer, organized groups are now using spoofed emails, fake URLs, and “ghost carriers” to hijack freight, prompting an FBI warning about cyber-enabled tactics used to impersonate legitimate businesses.
While a reward (like the one PBR is offering for information on the theft) is a private contract in which the company promises payment, it has no power to stop a district attorney from filing charges. That’s because, ultimately, the decision to prosecute belongs to the state, not to the victim of the crime. Only a prosecutor, or in some cases a federal agency acting with one, can actually grant immunity, and that requires a formal deal as opposed to a social media post.
One of the most famous examples stems from Lady Gaga in 2021, after her two French bulldogs, Koji and Gustav, were stolen at gunpoint and her dog walker was shot. She offered a $500,000 reward “no questions asked” for their return. Jennifer McBride brought the dogs back and sought the money, but Los Angeles prosecutors charged her anyway, and she pleaded no contest to receiving stolen property.
When McBride later sued Gaga for the reward plus $1.5 million in damages, arguing the offer was unconditional, a judge sided with Gaga: McBride’s own admission meant she knew the dogs were stolen, and Gaga’s promise never had the power to protect McBride from the state.
In the case of the PBR heist, the beer has yet to turn up. Pabst’s most recent Instagram update read simply: “Beer is getting warmer, trail is getting colder. Clock’s still ticking.”
