$1 Million of Guy Fieri’s Tequila Was Stolen in Hijacking — and the Celebrity Chef Is Offering a Reward for Its Recovery

(Photo: Santo Spirits)

Guy Fieri’s liquor empire suffered a blow earlier this month when two trucks carrying Santo Tequila were hijacked en route from Mexico. Santo Spirits, a joint venture between Fieri and Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar, will reportedly be unable to restock its products until next year.

A brand spokesperson says that the heists occurred sometime between Nov. 9-13 in the town of Laredo, Texas, located minutes from the U.S.-Mexico border crossing. One of the shipments was headed for Pennsylvania and the other for California. Together, the trucks held 24,240 bottles of tequila that the brand valued at around $1 million. Within those shipments were bottles of Santo Blanco, Reposado and a yet-released Extra Añejo Single Barrel aged for nearly three and a half years.

Fieri and the rest of the Santo team weren’t notified of the theft until Nov. 14, at least a day after the tequila went missing.

“We’ve worked so hard,” Fieri told PEOPLE Magazine. “This is our best year we’ve ever had in Santo. We just had all this momentum, and now whatever’s on the shelf is all people are going to get.”

In an incident report obtained by PEOPLE, shipping partner Johanson claimed that the trucks were illegally double-brokered between two different carriers. Johanson believes that the shipments switched hands somewhere in Laredo and that the criminals used a GPS emulator application to cover their tracks.

The investigation is now being handled by the Laredo Police Department, Los Angeles’ Cargo Criminal Apprehension Team and theft prevention network CargoNet. Though neither of the trucks has been reobtained, one of the shipments was reportedly tracked to a “known criminal cargo area” in Los Angeles for offloading.

“We are fully cooperating with the authorities on the investigation, but as of Sunday [17 November], they haven’t identified any possible culprits,” Santo CEO Dan Butkus told Forbes. “While we leave the investigation up to law enforcement, our primary focus right now is to work with our distillery partner in Mexico to replenish the stolen goods in time for the important holiday shopping season and with our shipping company to safeguard this from happening again in the future.”

Fieri — always the showman — has added a splash of drama to the proceedings. The “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” star reportedly plans to put out a $10,000 offer to anyone who can recover the Extra Añejo lost in the shipment. While the Blanco and Reposado expressions stolen in the heist can be replenished in a matter of months, the brand’s 39-month Extra Añejo amounts to a “crown jewel” that’ll take years to accurately reproduce.

Bottles of the brand’s Blanco, Reposado and Añejo.

Details of the crime bear a striking similarity to a separate incident that occurred at the end of 2023. Daytoon Distributors, a North Carolina-based spirits company gearing up for the launch of its Hacienda Chactun Tequila, had 19,000 bottles of its reposado mysteriously vanish after crossing the border. According to the brand’s CEO, criminals hacked the truck’s GPS signal while sending fake updates — allegedly including fake photos of traffic and a flat tire — to the logistics provider.

Criminals involved in the Santo hijacking appear to have emulated that technique down to a tee.

“Basically, they spoofed everyone after picking up our tequila loads. The drivers were sending in fake pictures saying they were having breakdown problems with the trucks, and the tracking the shipping broker was receiving matched their stories,” Butkus added. “As best we can tell, they waited till they crossed the United States border and were in Laredo to begin the theft. It wasn’t until the distributors called and reported that the trucks never arrived that we knew something was up.