Back in November, a crew of thieves in France made their way through a barbed-wire fence, pried open a door with a crowbar, and proceeded to steal 100 wheels of high-end comté cheese. One month before that, thieves in Italy made off with almost $1 million worth of Parmigiano-Reggiano. It was a European cheese-heist epidemic.
And now it is an intercontinental cheese-heist epidemic, as the cheese-related crime wave has made its way across the Atlantic. Police in Wisconsin are currently investigating two — TWO — massive cheese heists that took place over the past week. The first saw more than $90,000 worth of Parmesan disappear from a storage facility in Marshfield, and then, only a few days later, thieves in nearby Germantown made off with somewhere in the neighborhood of another $70,000 worth of cheese. That’s $160,000 worth of cheese heists. And police suspect the latter was a “well orchestrated” affair involving multiple people.
Police say the trailer was taken early Friday from D&G Transportation. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the 54-foot-long trailer and the semi-tractor used to steal it were found Friday night in the Milwaukee area.
The trailer was empty.
So, three things:
1) I choose to believe that all of these crimes — the two in Wisconsin AND the two in Europe — were pulled off by the same crew of highly sophisticated international cheese thieves. Like they’re sitting in a warehouse in Monaco right now just surrounded by mountains of cheese from these heists, and the leader of the gang — and I’m picturing Pierce Brosnan here — is saying, “Well done, gentlemen. Now we begin Phase Two.”
2) Phase Two is kind of like the end of The Thomas Crown Affair, but instead of bowler hats, everyone is running around with briefcases full of cheese while wearing cheesehead hats like Packer fans. Denis Leary remains furious about it.
3) I hope the next big Netflix true-crime series is about these Wisconsin cheese heists, because I am dying to know more about the Midwest’s cheese black market. There has to be one. That might actually be the biggest story here.
(Via NBC Chicago)
