$2.5 million worth of olive oil stolen in Houston, investigation underway
CLEAR LAKE, Texas - Coming on the heels of National Olive Oil Day, it’s a bizarre story. But one company, CHO America, with an office in Houston, had $2.5 million worth of olive oil stolen from a warehouse and found some of them in a store they don’t sell to.
The owner of CHO America, Wajih Rekik, said while some pallets of olive oil are still missing, he described what happened to his company as organized.
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"It’s not someone who likes olive oil, because there is no way he can drink that much olive oil. That is a lot of olive oil to drink," said Wajih Rekik.
Rekik says a single tip that his olive oil was not at the correct store helped him discover he had some slip from right under his hands.
"It took until we received pictures of the lot numbers that we knew that we had stored in our Houston warehouse, and that's what got us to go and verify the product in that particular warehouse, and we found a lot of product missing," Rekik said.
Rekik allowed us inside cases of olive oil that's safe. According to the owner of CHO America, he had over 300 pallets of that same olive oil stolen. He says that's enough to fill up a warehouse double stacked.
Going for $15 to $25 a bottle, Rekik says thousands were stolen from a third party warehouse on Navigation Road roughly two to three weeks ago, but the tip led them to recover some of the olive oil in pallets on Hillcroft.
"Four pallets were recovered at a store in Houston, and we got the tip again. Someone took the picture of the lot number, and our guys here can identify, and know that this was the stolen product. We went there with the stolen police and recovered. This is four pallets out of 300," said Rekik.
Rekik says HPD is working alongside him to help recover the olive oil, but he says the Houston community can help him even more.
"If they see it at any other store, other than these direct channels, they can send us a picture of the lot number, and we will be able to trace it," said Rekik.
Now, Rekik says this olive oil is produced in the Middle East, so his team is now working overtime to make up for the losses.
HPD says Property and Financial Crimes will continue to investigate this.