Quick Takes: Lobster loot

Seafood swindlers struck again at a Massachusetts warehouse in December. An official with freight handler Rexing Companies reported the theft of $400,000 in lobster meat after a sophisticated heist from a warehouse in Taunton. Company president Dylan Rexing acknowledged the theft in a Dec. 28 statement saying the lobster meat had been bound for Costco stores in the Midwest. Rexing said thieves stole a load of crab meat from the same facility earlier in the month. The shipper told The Boston Globe that the crime was accomplished through identity theft. “It followed a pattern we’re ­seeing more and more, where criminals impersonate legitimate carriers using spoofed emails and burner phones to hijack high-value freight while it’s in transit,” Rexing’s email said. The rise of organized cargo theft has drawn the attention of the FBI, which is investigating the incident. Shipping firm IMC Logistics in September published a white paper detailing the rise of cargo thefts. “Every week we’re seeing people doing this,” an IMC executive told the San Bernardino Sun. “They steal license plates and put them on trucks, then they talk to customers like they’re legitimate.”

Sleight of hand

A Thai fortuneteller told a 19-year-old girl she was on the brink of bad luck Jan. 1. But the 38-year-old fortuneteller left out the part about how he would cause it. After predicting the girl would lose something valuable, police say, the fortuneteller stole the girl’s iPhone 13 Pro. When the girl realized her phone was missing, she returned to the fortuneteller, who audaciously claimed her misplaced phone proved the accuracy of his soothsaying. A suspicious crowd later found the phone in the fortuneteller’s possession, and police arrested him.

Costing a pretty penny

How much is a penny worth? A lot, judging by what bidders were willing to pay at a December auction organized by the U.S. Mint. The last three pennies ever made fetched $800,000, or more than a quarter million dollars per penny. The mint, which ended penny production in November, auctioned the last few hundred pennies in three-cent sets and fetched a total of $16.8 million in proceeds. Each three-penny set included a single 24-karat gold penny and featured a unique Omega symbol to mark the end of an era.

Changing his tune

After drying out, an admittedly drunken thief chose to return a pair of valuable mandolins to a New Jersey musical instrument shop. Owners of Lark Street Music in Teaneck, N.J., said a man wearing a parka stole two mandolins each worth between $3,500 and $4,250 on Dec. 22. But on Dec. 26, store owner Buzzy Levine reported on social media that the thief had reentered the store and quietly returned the mandolins in a shopping bag with a note attached. In the note, the thief said he had made a mistake. “Sorry, I been drunk,” the thief wrote. “Merry Christmas. You are good man.” Levine said he attempted but failed to chase the man down after he made the return.

Dropping like iguanas

What happens when the Sunshine State doesn’t have so much sunshine? A cold snap on New Year’s Eve meant that in parts of Florida, it was raining iguanas. On Dec. 31, WINK News meteorologist Matt Devitt posted on social media photographs of cold-stunned iguanas as temperatures near his home in Fort Myers, Fla., dropped to 39 degrees. When temperatures drop into the 40s, the cold-blooded reptile’s metabolism begins to slow. As a defense mechanism, the animals stiffen their muscles, cease movement, and have a tendency to fall from trees where they like to perch. Prolonged exposure to temperatures in the 30s can be fatal for the lizards. Thankfully for the iguanas, the temperature reached a daytime high of 70 on Jan. 1, according to AccuWeather.

A shoedunit to solve

The ocean served up a mystery to Welsh beachcombers who began finding 19th-century footwear washed up on shore in southern Wales in December. In a single week, volunteers discovered more than 200 water-logged hobnailed leather boots in the rock pools of Ogmore by Sea Beach. The quantity of shoes washing up on shore led locals to believe they came from a former shipwreck. And the vintage style pointed to a shipwreck from the Victorian era. One postulated theory holds that the shoes could be from the wreck of an Italian cargo vessel that broke up off the coast about 150 years ago. The ship’s storage containers may have recently ruptured, releasing the shoes into the water.

Another McLawsuit

By not including rib meat in the McRib, fast-food giant McDonald’s perpetuates a fraud against American diners. That’s the allegation of a federal class-action lawsuit filed Dec. 23 in the Northern District of Illinois. In the lawsuit, plaintiffs allege that the McRib contains an amalgam of pork shoulder, heart, and tripe. The plaintiffs allege the popular seasonal sandwich does not include rib meat as the name and rib shape imply, leaving the company in violation of consumer protection statutes. A McDonald’s spokesperson said the allegations regarding heart and tripe are false and that the sandwiches are made from boneless pork.