Brazen train robbers are increasingly targeting Southern California’s vast rail network to pull off sophisticated heists and quickly traffic their loot — even flaunting their crimes on social media.

More than 65,000 train heists occur nationwide each year, with anywhere from a 25% to 40% of the thefts hitting Southern California annually, investigators told The California Post.

The value of the bandits’ plunder reaches into the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, according to sources with knowledge of the crimes.

Investigators revealed that tracking the crimes is difficult because they often go unreported, stoking fears that the epidemic could be even worse than imagined.

They say the trend is growing and more trains are being hit, as cartel-run crime rings behind the operations grow bolder in their thefts of shoes, clothing, tools and electronics quickly resold at deep discounts online.

“We call it shopping,” Supervisor Detective Carlos Monteroso of the LAPD’s Cargo Theft Task Force told the California Post. “The crews break into individual containers until they find what they’re looking for that’s high value. Then they’ll do their thing.”

Insiders working at the Port of Los Angeles have access to computer files with 𝘴єn𝘴iᩚtiᩚvє information about valuable train loads, investigators say, feeding those tips to crime bosses who dispatch their cavalries to remote train tracks.

LA has managed the busiest container port in the Western Hemisphere for the past 25 years, with roughly 2.65 million 20-foot containers leaving the port annually via railway. Thefts aren’t always reported because they occur on private railways, investigators say.

With Christmas coming and new products making their way to stores for holiday shoppers, the detective said train thefts are set to explode, disrupting supply chains for sought-after holiday presents.

Monteroso explained that the thieves are highly organized.

“These crews have identified vulnerable points along the tracks where they’ll get onto the trains coming from the Port of Los Angeles,” he said. “They’ll ride them out to into a remote part of the desert where they cut the brake hose, to force an emergency stop.”  

Once the trains are stationary, robbers have anywhere from minutes to hours to pilfer freight cars before police arrive, Monteroso explained.

As masked bandits cut into containers with electric handsaws, dozens of accomplices will arrive at the tracks in vans, SUVs and box trucks, sometimes filming the heists and posting them online.

“You’re seeing 20 guys, offloading several hundreds or thousands of boxes,” the detective said. “You know, just taking as much of the property as they can.” 

Nike shoes, Victoria Secret pajamas, Yeti Coolers, DeWalt tools and more have been recovered by police or seen in viral videos of recent heists.

The goods are then fenced to resellers, who flip the merchandise to customers via eBay, OfferUp or other online platforms “that have become the places for these guys to sell all this stolen property,” Monteroso said.

“There’s a whole network of buyers,” the detective said. “This guy buys electronics, this guy buys shoes. This guy buys tools. This guy buys e-bikes. A lot of money can be made. The amounts of property that they’re stealing, there’s a lot of money.”   

Moteroso’s team cracked a million-dollar case of stolen shoes just last month. “There’s an unreleased collaboration shoe between Brooks and Disney stolen off a train,” he said. “This guy was selling them on eBay prior to them even being released to the public.”  

Undercover investigators bought some of the shoes and traced the purchases to a cavernous Chatsworth warehouse, where they discovered 35 pallets of Hoka, New Balance, Adidas, ON and Salomon shoes, along with a haul of JanSport backpacks.

The owner, 51-year-old Heros Tasci of Simi Valley, was booked at Van Nuys Jail for receiving stolen property. Tasci used a business called DesignerDeals4Less to sell the stolen goods, Monteroso said. Monteroso.

But suspects like Tasci are just midlevel players in the massive industry.

The honchos calling the śh́óts, investigators say, are nearly untouchable. They quarterback huge cargo theft crime rings remotely, often operating overseas. Members of the Russian mafia, Turkish organized crime and Mexican cartels are involved, investigators say.

San Bernardino County Sheriffs arrested nine train bandits connected to the Sinaloa Cartel late last month — seizing $333,000 in stolen loot that included JBL speakers, Logitech computer hardware, Victoria’s Secret clothing, Nike shoes, New Balance shoes and Husky tools.    

Investigators also recovered four semiautomatic handguns, a drone used for surveillance, a large amount of cash, tools used to access train cargo containers, fentanyl suspected to be possessed for sale and four vehicles connected to recent train cargo burglaries.

The massive bust was the result of a yearlong investigation that led deputies to a residence on East 35th Street in San Bernardino, where they apprehended nine suspects, all Mexican nationals from the crime-ridden state of Sinaloa.

A sergeant with the sheriff’s office said an investigation of the case is ongoing.

Keith Lewis, a cargo theft expert with 45 years of experience, who’s vice president of operations at the cargo theft intelligence and recovery network Verisk CargoNet, said it’s almost impossible to capture to the honchos of the heists.

“The guys we catch, nobody speaks English, and if you do have somebody that does speak English, they want a lawyer and they have no idea,” who hired them to do the job, he said.

“They got a phone that goes to another burner phone. That the guy that answers the burner phone says ‘hello’,” said Lewis, leading investigators nowhere.

Meanwhile, “the shot caller is sitting somewhere drinking a margarita or a glass of vodka, telling these guys what to do,” said Lewis. “The shot caller is not going out and breaking in, so you really never get to shot caller.”

Train lines aggressively deploy drones, fences and cameras to secure their lines, said Lewis, but with thousands of miles of rails in remote areas, he said, securing it all is next to impossible.

“They’re very proactive. They do a very good job,” Lewis explained.  “They have their own police department, so they’re not calling 911 to make a police report. They’re not going to share a lot of this information, though, because it’s their bad fortune.”

One top cargo theft investigator who works for a major corporation said the amount of merchandise stolen from trains is vastly underreported and may exceed tens of billions of dollars in value each year nationally.

Light punishments for property thefts in California make it difficult to flip informants, so the scale of the problem remains unknown, and those at the top remain immune from consequences, they said.

“There is no threat of prosecution for any of these people,” said one top investigator “So that’s the core of the problem. The whole thing is very poorly defined.”