who stole $1 million worth of tequila from Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar?

was it you?

Nov 17, 2024

Sometimes a collection of words can take your breath away. It’s one of the incredible things about language, about the systems we’ve created to communicate with each other, this ability for a series of squiggles and lines to have meaning and for that meaning to have the kind of power to leave you flabbergasted. Maybe it’s a line from a novel you love. Maybe it’s a heartfelt note from a loved one that brings a tear to your eye. Or maybe, if you are me, it’s this headline from People Magazine this week: “Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar's Santo Tequila Trucks Hijacked in 'Double Heist.' Now $1M Worth of Tequila Is Missing (Exclusive).”

It’s beautiful. Every piece builds on what came before it. The momentum builds all the way through until the very end when the word “exclusive” shows up tucked inside parentheses. Someone stole $1 million worth of tequila from Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar and People Magazine, of all the publications in the world, landed the exclusive. I really can’t explain how happy this makes me.

It gets better, too. The article itself somehow lives up to that headline. Like, for example, do you want to know how much tequila you have to steal to get a seven-figure tequila heist? People has you covered.

The trucks were transporting 440 cases of tequila, or 24,240 bottles, including Santo blanco, reposado and a specially-made extra añejo, which took 39 months to create.

That is, objectively, a lot of tequila. Just so, so much tequila, all of it belonging to Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar.

This is where you’re probably thinking “But… how does one steal one million dollars worth of tequila from Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar?” Excellent question. And it brings me great pleasure to report that the answer involves satellites.

"We believe the GPS tracking signal we were monitoring was spoofed by a GPS emulator application used by the criminals," reads the report.

Okay, three things:

I can see this scene in the movie I need someone to make about this as clear as day
Picture some guy at a computer screen following the dots on his screen that represent the trucks carrying the tequila and then suddenly both dots disappear and he like spills his coffee and slaps the computer a few times and then finally realizes what’s happening and calls his supervisor on the phone and says “Uh… sir… we have a problem”
Ludacris is involved somehow

Hey, let’s see what Guy Fieri said about the million-dollar tequila heist.

Fieri suspects "someone could be trying to break the momentum" Santo had been gaining and he said he is especially baffled that the criminals went after two trucks.
"I mean, one is one. But now you've got to have double the amount of people to pull off the double heist," he says. "It just seems so much riskier to take two trucks."

Okay, three more things:

I love that he thinks this might have been corporate sabotage to thwart his business and not just some guys who saw an angle to re-route thousands of bottles of tequila to buyers around the country
Imagine the phone conversation Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar had about this
I really do need someone to make a movie or television show about this, loosely fictionalized if necessary

Guy Fieri agrees.

He compares the incident to the 1978 Lufthansa heist, which inspired numerous films, including Goodfellas.
"It's like a movie — I never in a million years thought this was coming down the pike like this," Fieri says, "but it's real."

Martin Scorsese, if you are reading this, first of all, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription, but also, please make this movie. Joe Pesci and Ludacris and then whoever else you want.

Maybe DiCaprio as Guy Fieri. Think about it.

STUFF I TYPED

— my Friday newsletter, which opened with a section about the hunt for the next James Bond and ended with me making a joke about Joe Pera doing it and somehow not posting the video where he suggested himself for the role two years ago