A million dollars’ worth of running shoes, and yet these suspects couldn’t outrun the law.
Investigators struck athletic-gear gold last week when they discovered a cache of stolen running shoes and other goods worth $1 million inside a Chatsworth warehouse that had been lifted from cargo trains in the Los Angeles region, authorities said.
Brooks, Hokas, New Balance, Adidas and On shoes were stacked to the ceiling inside DesignerDeals4Less, L.A. police said. Detectives, who worked with multiple agencies on the probe, said the contents filed 35 pallets. “The items were stolen from trains throughout California,” said Los Angeles Police Capt. Mike Bland.
LAPD cargo-theft detectives confronted the business owner with the evidence, and investigators said he “admitted to purchasing the stolen train property from illegitimate distributors of the brands.” Heros Tasci, 51, of Simi Valley, was arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen property. He subsequently posted bail. Investigators are working with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office on the case.
Investigators became aware of the massive haul of allegedly stolen goods when rare pairs of Brooks-Disney running shoes popped up for sale on the internet. The shoes are usually only available at Disney-run events. So investigators made a “controlled purchase of stolen Brooks/Disney collaborative shoes” after they discovered them being sold on eBay. That led detectives on Wednesday to the DesignerDeals4Less warehouse in the 21000 block of Nordhoff Street.
An LAPD task force seeking to crack down on thefts from the trains and trucks that distribute goods across the nation from the massive ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach has turned up a number of massive ripoffs.
Last year, the LAPD found two L.A. County storefronts with about $4.5 million worth of goods stolen from trains, trucks and cargo ships, authorities said. Chief Jim McDonnell said a sophisticated cargo theft ring was operating out of DJ General Tool & Wire’s Montebello and Huntington Park locations. The stolen goods included power tools, e-bikes and appliances from brands such as Dyson, Milwaukee, DeWalt and Makita, police said.
Southern California is a global hub for cargo in this e-commerce age. Train cars filled with valuable goods are crisscrossing hundreds of miles of track at all hours. Supply-chain congestion sometimes causes freight trains to sit idle, leaving them vulnerable to thieves in urban railyards. In 2022, images of trains being plundered in Lincoln Heights set off a public outcry, with goods scattered across the rails by thieves as they searched for the most valuable items. “The images looked like a third world country,” Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters.
Busts on a smaller scale occur almost daily in Southern California. Colton police arrested a man Thursday suspected of stealing $54,000 worth of Hot Wheels cars from a freight train — some 350 boxes, according to authorities.
In August, Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Police recovered 123 boxes of McLaren F1 Lego sets valued at about $230 each connected to a boxcar burglary, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
In an area of the Mojave Desert, cargo thefts are a pervasive problem, with thieves boarding slow-moving freight trains to steal high-value merchandise, sometimes slashing an air brake hose to bring the railcars to an emergency stop. Such thefts have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 75,000 incidents reported in 2025, according to industry estimates compiled by the Assn. of American Railroads. The trade group attributes the rise to organized criminal networks.
The cargo is typically loaded into box trucks, or hidden in nearby brush until the trucks arrive. These tactics are often employed by transnational criminal groups that consist primarily of citizens from Sinaloa state in Mexico, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent said in affidavits filed in federal court last year. A string of such heists in 2024 and 2025 resulted in the thefts of nearly $2 million worth of Nike sneakers, according to investigators.
In last week’s investigation, the LAPD worked with BNSF Police, Union Pacific Railroad Police, Alameda Belt Line Police, Los Angeles Port Police, Los Angeles World Airport Police, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office Bureau of Investigation, and Homeland Security Investigations.
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