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The brazen theft of an entire truckload of Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) has taken another wild turn, with the beer giant’s CEO personally calling out the thieves and putting a reward on the table to get the stolen haul back.
“Someone had the (nerve) to steal it,” Pabst Brewing Company CEO Greig DeBow said in a video posted to TikTok. “I don’t know. Kudos to them, perhaps.”
But DeBow quickly made clear that he wanted the beer back.
“I’m sure they look cool with a garage full of PBR,” he said. “That’s actually not cool, though. But we want it back.”
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DeBow then revealed that Pabst is offering up to $20,000 for new information leading to the recovery of the stolen beer and gave whoever has it until Sept. 9 to return it.
“We want it by Sept. 9,” he said. “If you don’t bring it back, well, we have no choice. We’re going to offer up to $20,000 for any new information leading to the lost goods.”
The public appeal is the latest twist in what Pabst has dubbed the “Great American Beer Heist,” which began when 1,602 cases of PBR, roughly 40,000 pounds of beer, disappeared from a warehouse in Montclair, California, Aug. 17.
“It’s that simple,” DeBow said of the reward. “There’s been a hell of a lot of support thus far, and we really appreciate it.”
The $20,000 offer raises the stakes in Pabst’s increasingly public effort to track down the massive shipment.
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The Texas-based company had previously promised a reward to anyone who helped crack the case but did not disclose how much it was willing to pay. Pabst also initially gave whoever took the shipment 18 days and 44 minutes to return it with “no questions asked.”
The oddly specific countdown appeared to be a nod to 1844, the year Pabst was founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Pabst later insisted the bizarre disappearance was not a publicity stunt.
“To clear up the confusion, this story is real,” the company wrote on social media, urging anyone with information to come forward.
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As the deadline ticked down, Pabst joked that the “beer is getting warmer” while the trail got colder and asked anyone who spotted the truck to take a photo and contact the company.
But behind Pabst’s playful posts is a serious police investigation into what could be a larger cargo theft operation.
Montclair police said in a social media post that investigators were looking into two cargo thefts reported Aug. 17 at an Anheuser-Busch distribution center that could be connected.
In the first case, a shipment worth approximately $45,000 and bound for Tucson, Arizona, was picked up for delivery but never reached its destination, according to police.
About an hour later, police said, a company claiming to be a subcontractor used fraudulent paperwork to arrange the pickup of roughly $25,000 worth of Anheuser-Busch and Pabst Blue Ribbon products.
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Investigators found discrepancies with the trucking company information, drivers and vehicles associated with the pickups, leading police to believe the cases could be part of the same fraudulent cargo theft operation.
Pabst is now hoping the promise of up to $20,000 will help break the case.
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“As many of you might’ve heard, a great deal of PBR has gone missing,” DeBow said. “How much, you ask? Well, 1,602 cases. That’s a full truckload of PBR.”
Anyone with new information that could help locate the beer is being asked to contact Pabst at hotline@pabst.com.
Montclair police also asked anyone with information about the thefts, vehicles, driver, delivery company or missing cargo to call the department at 909-621-4771.
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