pistachios

Meanwhile in California: Man Arrested For Stealing Almost 21 Tons of Pistachios (Now That’s Nuts!)

We love pistachios as much as the next person, but we can’t say we’ve ever been tempted to steal one – much less 21 tons of them. But we’re not Alberto Montemayor, who was recently arrested for what has to be one of the nuttiest – if not biggest – thefts in pistachio history.

It all started when The Touchstone Pistachio Company in San Joaquin Valley, California, came up 42,000 pounds short on a routine audit of its pistachios in June. Authorities were contacted and an investigation began. They soon discovered that a tractor-trailer had been moved from a family-owned company, Montemayor Trucking, to the city of Delano. There, the pistachios had been removed from their original 2,000-pound sacks and repackaged into smaller bags for re-sale.

The mastermind behind all this? Montemayor, a contractor for the pistachio company. In total, he snatched almost 21 tons of the nuts.

“That was pretty large,” Sgt. Joseph England, who leads the agricultural crimes unit, told the New York Times. “You don’t come across that every day.”

We’re kind of disappointed that Montemayor went to all this trouble just to resell the nuts. When we first heard about this story, we assumed he was, well, nuts for pistachios and somehow managed to eat them all. After all, that’s what we’d do if we ever decided to steal some nuts. The only problem would be: how to get rid of the shells discreetly?

Cover Photo: Edgaras Bendikas (Getty Images)

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