Montclair police are investigating the theft of more than 40,000 pounds of beer from a distribution center in Montclair, a case that grew from a $45,000 estimate to $70,000 by Friday. The missing product included Pabst Blue Ribbon and Old Milwaukee, and police said the haul added up to 1,602 cases and 33,984 cans.
That scale is why the case is drawing attention now. Montclair Police Lt. Rick Dominguez said Thursday the stolen product was worth $45,000, and the department then raised its estimate a day later. The original report listed 860 cases of 15-packs of 25-ounce PBR cans, 546 cases of 30-packs of 12-ounce PBR, and 196 cases of 24-packs of 12-ounce non-alcoholic Old Milwaukee cans.
The weight matters almost as much as the count. Police said the 1,602 cases came to 40,049 pounds once pallets, plastic separators and other material were included, a load heavy enough to make the disappearance hard to dismiss as a simple warehouse loss. Dominguez put the value at $45,000 when he spoke with Essential California on Thursday, and Montclair Police later said the product was worth $70,000.
There was also confusion at the start. Pabst first posted that a truck had been stolen, but company officials later clarified that no vehicle went missing. That left the focus on the beer itself and on how the cans left a Montclair distribution center without immediate detection.
Police believed two thefts took place on Aug. 17, one at 10 a.m. and the other an hour later. One involved $45,000 worth of product picked up at the distribution center and never delivered to Tucson, Ariz. The second involved $25,000 worth of Anheuser-Busch and PBR beers retrieved by a purported subcontracting company that submitted false paperwork. Investigators said the incidents shared similarities and were examining whether they were tied to a fraudulent cargo-theft operation.
Montclair police did not publicly address the heist for more than a week after it happened, and the delay only sharpened the questions around a case that has been described as one of the largest beer thefts in California. What remains unanswered is where the missing product went, who moved it, and whether the two Aug. 17 incidents were part of the same scheme.
