Sammy Hagar and his business partner, the celebrity chef Guy Fieri, have become victims of organised crime after two trucks transporting $1 million worth of the pair's Santo Spirits tequila were stolen in separate heists near the Mexican border.
The trucks, which were en route from Santo Spirits' base at the Tequila el Viejito distillery near Guadalajara, Mexico, went missing near Laredo, Texas, last week, and the cargo – 24,240 bottles of Santo Blanco and Reposado, as well as bottles of super-expensive Extra Añejo – is nowhere to be found.
"For a growing company like Santo, it's really a shame for something like this to happen in the middle of our strongest year to date and right before the holidays!" Hagar tells Fox News Digital.
According to the agency investigating the crime, the trucks were "illegally double brokered" to a different carrier, and their GPS trackers spoofed using a GPS emulator application.
"This is the strangest thing I've ever seen in the spirits industry over 25 years," Santo Spirits president Dan Butkus tells People. "I've never seen anything like this. Two of our trucks, four days apart, to be stolen, it's so out of the ordinary, out of the norm, that we're wondering why our trucks may have been targeted.
"I mean, one is one. But now you've got to have double the amount of people to pull off the double heist. It just seems so much riskier to take two trucks."
"Anyone that knows business knows that this is a huge setback for any company in a hugely competitive market," says Hagar. "But Guy and I will survive. Most of all, we're glad that nobody was hurt during this crime."
Anyone with information about the whereabouts of the missing tequila should contact the Laredo Police Department, the Los Angeles Cargo Criminal Apprehension Team, or the recovery network CargoNet. Fieri is offering a $10,000 reward to anyone able to locate the missing trucks.
In other news, Hagar has announced that his Best Of All Worlds Tour will head to Dolby Live at the Park MGM in Las Vegas next March. The nine-show residency runs from April 30 until May 17, and tickets go on general sale this Friday at 10am PCT.
