International Chocolate Thief Drives Off With 20 Tons Of Milka

Austrian police have confirmed the most recent caper to hit the chocolate industry, this time affecting Milka. According to German news service DW, the company hired a local transport service to ship 20 tons of chocolate from their Bludenz factory to Belgium. That transport service seconded their contract to a Hungarian freight firm, which then hired a Czech contractor to make the delivery. When a Czech truck arrived to pick up its cargo, Milka employees loaded it up without believing anything was suspicious—after all, the driver provided paperwork, and who would falsify paperwork about chocolate delivery? Apparently lots of people, because according the police, this is a growing niche in the world of audacious heists:

"In recent years we have seen a number of individual cases where loaded trucks never arrived — also containing chocolate," a police spokeswoman told news agency DPA. One high profile case she may have been referring to was the Great Kinder Egg Robbery of 2017, in which a truck filled over $82,000 of chocolate novelties and jars of Nutella was stolen in Germany. The case has yet to be solved.

Currently both the Milka chocolate—which has a street value of around $55,000—and the driver remain missing. Authorities urge the public to keep their eye out for any suspicious activity, like the sort surrounding the 2019 California cheese heists, which uncovered an entire black market cheese enterprise. Remember to only buy chocolate from reputable sources and not underneath bridges from the trunk of some guy's car.