46K Cheese Heist: Wisconsin ‘Cheese Pirates’ Get Desperate, Steal Ten Tons Of Cheddar

CBS46 News Atlanta reports that thieves in Wisconsin have recently pulled off the heist of the century (at least, as far as cheese-related crimes committed in Southeastern Wisconsin go) by stealing a trailer full of 10 tons of cheddar cheese.

@iamcheesethief as you are the one and only cheese thief have a badly drawn picture of a theif stealing cheese pic.twitter.com/zsnm2E0PUp

— ¯_(?)_/¯ (@cait_chun) March 18, 2016

“The cheese pirates are back at it again,” said Vince Christian, a cheese dealer in Oak Creek, the town where the crime took place, during an interview with local news station TMJ4.

“It’s kind of crazy that cheese is now so valuable people are going off with entire trucks of it.”

Authorities report that the $46,000 worth of Wisconsin cheddar cheese had been in a trailer hitched to a semi and was being transported to New York from Green Bay when the truck’s driver parked in a gated lot and left his vehicle unattended for a few hours so he could run some errands.

One cannot really accuse the truck’s driver of carelessness, because the lot in which the cheese heist went down was totally fenced in.

“It’s a fence with a keypad number, so somebody would have had to know what key pad number to get in,” added the lot’s owner when talking to FOX6Now, speculating that the cheese thieves must have already been familiar with the facility.

As for the local police, they are taking the heist very seriously. The Oak Creek Police Captain points out that the theft of 20,000 pounds of cheese is just as serious as the theft of any other item work $46,000.

“It’s unique. It’s a lot of cheese. It’s a high-value property, and we’re gonna take it seriously like we would any theft.”

That being said, it is a strange way to make $46,000. If money is what the thieves are after, one would think it might be a lot easier and less complicated to go after something else that could be sold for that kind of cash, like an antique, or a work of art in a museum, or actual money.

Is it possible that the coordinators of the cheese heist are not out for financial gains at all, but are actually just ravenous cheese eaters? If this is the case, it is safe to assume they have quite a few others to donate cheese to, because even the biggest of cheeseheads would have trouble downing 10 tons of the stuff alone.

This theory, although a bit of a stretch, would actually make sense insofar as helping explain Wisconsin’s recent rash of cheese heists. In January, $70,000 worth of cheese was stolen in Germantown, Wisconsin, and that was only days after $90,000 worth of parmesan was nicked in Marshfield. In the case of both heists, the stolen cheese was being stored inside a trailer that was taken. The $90,000 cheese heist almost makes sense because, unruly or not, $90,000 of anything is a large financial asset. But $46,000? It’s questionable.

Whether or not this is connected to the recent cheese heist scourge is not confirmed either way, but the Oak Hill Police and Mr. Christian are trying to connect the dots.

“If they keep taking these trucks I’m sure they’re going somewhere,” Christian said. “But I’ve never heard anything about where.”

Authorities are still making progress on the case, they claim, and they are fascinated because of how distinct it is. After all, local police don’t see large-scale cheese heists like this every day — even in Wisconsin, where football fans wear giant plastic wedges of cheddar cheese on their heads.

“It’s a unique case,” said one of the officers looking into the cheese heist. “We’re working several leads right now.”

Time will tell if these criminals get their just desserts.

[Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images]