Coffee crooks just lost a serious stash in the western suburbs. Cook County Sheriff’s investigators say they recovered about 24,000 pounds of stolen Wawa-brand coffee this week after a tip led them to a warehouse in Melrose Park, part of an ongoing retail theft investigation that is pulling back the curtain on large-scale supply chain and resale scams around the region.
Deputies with the Cook County Organized Retail Crime Unit hit the warehouse on Monday and cleared out the coffee, which was being stored at what officials described as a distribution site. For now, the haul is out of circulation and sitting in law enforcement custody while detectives work backward to figure out exactly how it got there and who was planning to profit from it.
What Officials Say
According to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, members of the Organized Retail Crime Unit entered the Melrose Park facility with the distribution company’s consent and seized roughly 24,000 pounds of Wawa coffee. Investigators pegged the value of the load at more than $100,000.
The sheriff’s office said detectives linked the coffee to a theft at a Whiteside County facility in May and are now focused on figuring out who moved the product into the Melrose Park warehouse and how it was meant to be resold. The investigation is still active, and the coffee will stay in law enforcement’s hands while that work continues…