Investigators in Illinois recovered millions of dollars worth of stolen data center supplies after cargo thieves began targeting components—like servers and the cabling and power materials used to build and operate data centers—on highways and at transfer yards.

The Cook County Sheriff’s Office said it recovered two stolen trailers at a Chicago-area truck yard. One trailer contained about $300,000 worth of copper wire spools, which are used in data center power distribution and connectivity. The copper-load trailer had been reported stolen from Pine Hill, Alabama and was traced to the truck yard, where investigators also found evidence it had been concealed with altered license plates.

The second trailer, delivered around a week earlier to the same yard operator, turned out to have been stolen as well—this time from Jacksonville, Florida—and contained roughly $1 million worth of data center infrastructure equipment.

Authorities framed the case as part of a broader shift: as AI-driven data center construction expands, criminals see valuable, high-demand supplies moving through the supply chain. Federal estimates cited in reporting put cargo theft losses in the tens of billions of dollars annually, and the trend increasingly involves organized rings targeting specific, profitable loads rather than opportunistic theft.