Pabst Blue Ribbon Offers $20,000 Reward for Its Stolen Beer Truck

Pabst wants its beer back badly enough to put a price on it. Two weeks after we first wrote about the missing truckload of Pabst Blue Ribbon, the company is now offering up to $20,000 for information that leads to the recovery of 1,602 missing cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon and non-alcoholic Old Milwaukee, and it has given the thief a hard deadline to make things right.

The Reward, and Why It Gets Bigger After September 9

Pabst Brewing Co. CEO Greig DeBow announced the reward on Wednesday, saying the company will pay for any new information that helps recover the beer. The offer is structured to reward speed: according to a Pabst TikTok post, anyone who comes forward with new information before September 9 is eligible for up to $5,000, and after that deadline passes the reward jumps to as much as $20,000, a strange incentive that effectively pays more the longer the thief stays hidden.

What Actually Happened, According to Police

The Montclair Police Department says the beer disappeared in two separate incidents on the same morning of August 17 at an Anheuser-Busch distribution center on Brooks Street. Around 10 a.m., a shipment worth roughly $45,000 and bound for Tucson, Arizona, was picked up for delivery and never arrived. About an hour later, a company claiming to be a subcontractor used fraudulent paperwork to arrange a second pickup, this one worth about $25,000. Investigators found discrepancies in the trucking company, driver, and vehicle details tied to both pickups and believe the two thefts, worth about $70,000 combined, are connected.

Part of a Bigger Pattern, Not Just a Weird PBR Story

Pabst has leaned into the absurdity of the story, branding it the “Great American Beer Heist” and posting a countdown clock on Instagram, but the theft itself fits a much less funny trend. Southern California has become one of the country’s biggest hot spots for cargo theft, and industry tracker Verisk CargoNet has recorded a sharp rise in fraudulent-pickup schemes exactly like the one Montclair police described, where thieves pose as a legitimate trucking subcontractor to walk out with a full trailer and no one notices until the delivery never shows up.

No one has been arrested, and police have not said whether the beer is still intact or has already been broken up and resold. Anyone with information is asked to email hotline@pabst.com or contact the Montclair Police Department directly.