Guy Fieri opened up about falling victim to a major heist last year, where two semi-trucks loaded with over $1 million worth of Santo Tequila—his brand co-founded with former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar—vanished en route to a Texas warehouse.
Speaking with 60 Minutes, Fieri revealed the theft of 24,000 bottles caused significant financial strain and even led to layoffs. “It hurt. It hurt bad,” he admitted. “We were heading into the fourth quarter, then we lose all the tequila. We couldn’t stock shelves, and we had to let people go. That was the hardest part.”
The stolen shipment included a limited-edition Extra Añejo Single Barrel tequila that took more than three years to produce and could take up to two more to replace.
Fieri recalled the moment Dan Butkus, president of Santo Spirits, called to tell him the trucks had gone missing. “Wait, wait, wait. Is this a hijacking?” the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives star remembered asking. “Are the drivers okay? I couldn’t wrap my head around how thousands of bottles of tequila could just disappear.”
After the tequila was bottled in Mexico and cleared through customs, it was shipped to Laredo, Texas, where a logistics company arranged transportation to its next stop. However, 60 Minutes reported that the trucking company assigned to the job had subcontracted to two fake trucking firms.
These scammers used counterfeit letterheads, emails, and phone numbers to pose as legitimate companies. The scheme, known as “double brokering,” is a common loophole in the shipping industry. To buy time, the thieves sent phony updates about mechanical delays and provided fake GPS data to make it seem like the trucks were on schedule.
Keith Lewis, a former police officer who now leads CargoNet—a firm specializing in cargo theft investigations—found that the drivers were tricked into rerouting from Pennsylvania to Los Angeles. Working with the LAPD Cargo Theft Unit, investigators located one of the drivers, whose statements led them to a warehouse in southeast L.A.
Inside, authorities discovered 11,000 bottles of the missing Santo Tequila.
