Zahr told me his contact angrily told him they mostly ship Coca-Cola products, not luxury cars. \u201cHe was yelling and screaming about it,\u201d Zahr said.<\/p>\n
Over the years, people have broken into his business to steal cars, or they\u2019ve rented them out and never come back. But until this day, he\u2019d never had a car simply disappear during shipping. He\u2019d expected no trouble this time around, especially since he\u2019d used Central Dispatch\u2014\u201ca legit platform that everyone uses to transport cars,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the scary part about it, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
Wreaking havoc<\/h3>\n
Zahr had unwittingly been caught up in a new and growing type of organized criminal enterprise: vehicle transport fraud and theft. Crooks use email phishing, fraudulent paperwork, and other tactics to impersonate legitimate transport companies and get hired to deliver a luxury vehicle. They divert the shipment away from its intended destination and then use a mix of technology, computer skills, and old-school chop shop techniques to erase traces of the vehicle\u2019s original ownership and registration.<\/p>\n
These vehicles can be retitled and resold in the US or loaded into a shipping container and sent to an overseas buyer. In some cases, the car has been resold or is out of the country by the time the rightful owner even realizes it\u2019s missing.<\/p>\n
\u201cCriminals have learned that stealing cars via the web portals has become extremely easy, and when I say easy\u2014it\u2019s become seamless,\u201d says Steven Yariv, the CEO of Dealers Choice Auto Transport of West Palm Beach, Florida, one of the country\u2019s largest luxury-vehicle transport brokers.<\/p>\n
Individual cases have received media coverage thanks to the high value of the stolen cars and the fact that some belong to professional athletes and other celebrities. In late 2024, a Lamborghini Hurac\u00e1n belonging to Colorado Rockies third baseman Kris Bryant went missing<\/a> en route to his home in Las Vegas; R&B singer Ray J told<\/a> TMZ the same year that two Mercedes Maybachs never arrived in New York as planned; and last fall, NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O\u2019Neal had a $180,000 custom Range Rover stolen<\/a> when the transport company hired to move the vehicle was hacked. \u201cThey\u2019re saying they think it\u2019s probably in Dubai by now, to be honest,\u201d an employee of the company that customized the SUV told Shaq in a YouTube video<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cCriminals have learned that stealing cars via the web portals has become extremely easy, and when I say easy\u2014it\u2019s become seamless.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Steven Yariv, CEO, Dealers Choice Auto Transport of West Palm Beach, Florida<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n But the nationwide epidemic of vehicle transport fraud and theft has remained under the radar, even as it\u2019s rocked the industry over the past two years. MIT Technology Review<\/em> identified more than a dozen cases involving high-end vehicles, obtained court records, and spoke to law enforcement, brokers, drivers, and victims in multiple states to reveal how transport fraud is wreaking havoc across the country.<\/p>\n It\u2019s challenging to quantify the scale of this type of crime, since there isn\u2019t a single entity or association that tracks it. Still, these law enforcement officials and brokers, as well as the country\u2019s biggest online car-transport marketplaces, acknowledge that fraud and theft are on the rise.\u00a0<\/p>\n When I spoke with him in August, Yariv estimated that around 8,000 exotic and high-end cars had been stolen since the spring of 2024, resulting in over $1\u00a0billion in losses. \u201cYou\u2019re talking 30 cars a day [on] average is gone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Multiple state and local law enforcement officials told MIT Technology Review<\/em> that the number is plausible. (The FBI did not respond to a request for an interview.)<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t surprise me,\u201d said J.D. Decker, chief of the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles\u2019 police division and chair of the fraud subcommittee for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge business.\u201d<\/p>\n Data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), a nonprofit that works with law enforcement and the insurance industry to investigate insurance fraud and related crimes, provides further evidence of this crime wave. NICB tracks both car theft and cargo theft, a broad category that refers to goods, money, or baggage that is stolen while part of a commercial shipment; the category also covers cases in which a vehicle is stolen via a diverted transport truck or a purloined car is loaded into a shipping container. NICB\u2019s statistics about car theft show that it has declined<\/a> following an increase during the pandemic\u2014but over the same period cargo theft has dramatically increased, to an estimated<\/a> $35\u00a0billion annually. The group projected in June that it was expected<\/a> to rise 22% in 2025.<\/p>\n NICB doesn\u2019t break out data for vehicles as opposed to other types of stolen cargo. But Bill Woolf, a regional director for the organization, said an antifraud initiative at the Port of Baltimore experienced a 200% increase from 2023 to 2024 in the number of stolen vehicles recovered. He said the jump could be due to the increased effort to identify stolen cars moving through the port, but he noted that earlier the day we spoke, agents had recovered two high-end stolen vehicles bound for overseas.<\/p>\n \u201cOne day, one container\u2014a million dollars,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Many other vehicles are never recovered\u2014perhaps a result of the speed with which they\u2019re shipped off or sold. Travis Payne, an exotic-car dealer in Atlanta, told me that transport thieves often have buyers lined up before they take a car: \u201cWhen they steal them, they have a plan.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2024, Payne spent months trying to locate a Rolls-Royce he\u2019d purchased after it was stolen via transport fraud. It eventually turned up in the Instagram feed of a Mexican pop star, he says. He never got the car back.<\/p>\n The criminals are \u201cgonna keep doing it,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause they make a couple phone calls, make a couple email accounts, and they get a $400,000 car for free. I mean, it makes them God, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n The explosion of vehicle transport fraud follows a pattern that has played out across the economy over the past roughly two decades: A business that once ran on phones, faxes, and personal relationships shifted to online marketplaces that increased efficiency and brought down costs\u2014but the reduction in human-to-human interaction introduced security vulnerabilities that allowed organized and often international fraudsters to enter the industry.<\/p>\n In the case of vehicle transport, the marketplaces are online \u201cload boards\u201d where car owners, dealerships, and manufacturers post about vehicles that need to be shipped from one location to another. Central Dispatch claims to be the largest vehicle load board and says<\/a> on its website that thousands of vehicles are posted on its platform each day. It\u2019s part of Cox Automotive, an industry juggernaut that owns major vehicle auctions, Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, and other businesses that work with auto dealers, lenders, and buyers.<\/p>\n The system worked pretty well until roughly two years ago, when organized fraud rings began compromising broker and carrier accounts and exploiting loopholes in government licensing to steal loads with surprising ease and alarming frequency.<\/p>\n A theft can start with a phishing email that appears to come from a legitimate load board. The recipient, a broker or carrier, clicks a link in the message, which appears to go to the real site\u2014but logging in sends the victim\u2019s username and password to a criminal. The crook logs in as the victim, changes the account\u2019s email and phone number to reroute all communications, and begins claiming loads of high-end vehicles. Cox Automotive declined an interview request but said in a statement that the \u201cload board system still works well\u201d and that \u201cfraud impacts a very small portion\u201d of listings.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time we come up with a security measure to prevent the fraudster, they come up with a countermeasure.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Bill Woolf, a regional director, National Insurance Crime Bureau<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Criminals also gain access to online marketplaces by exploiting a lax regulatory environment. While a valid US Department of Transportation registration is required to access online marketplaces, it\u2019s not hard for bad actors to register sham transport companies and obtain a USDOT number from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the agency that regulates commercial motor vehicles. In other cases, criminals compromise the FMCSA accounts of legitimate companies and change their phone numbers and email addresses in order to impersonate them and steal loads. (USDOT did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n As Bek Abdullayev, the founder of Super Dispatch, one of Central Dispatch\u2019s biggest competitors, explained in an episode<\/a> of the podcast Auto Transport Co-Pilot<\/em>, \u201cFMCSA [is] authorizing people that are fraudulent companies\u2014people that are not who they say they are.\u201d He added that people can \u201cgame the system and \u2026 obtain paperwork that makes [them] look like a legitimate company.\u201d For example, vehicle carrier insurance can be obtained quickly\u2014if temporarily\u2014by submitting an online application with fraudulent payment credentials.<\/p>\n The bottom line is that crooks have found myriad ways to present themselves as genuine and permitted vehicle transport brokers and carriers. Once hired to move a vehicle, they often repost the car on a load board using a different fraudulent or compromised account. While this kind of subcontracting, known as \u201cdouble-\u00adbrokering,\u201d is sometimes used by companies to save money, it can also be used by criminals to hire an unwitting accomplice to deliver the stolen car to their desired location. \u201cThey\u2019re booking cars and then they\u2019re just reposting them and dispatching them out to different routes,\u201d says Yariv, the West Palm Beach transport broker.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of this is cartel operated,\u201d says Decker, of the Nevada DMV, who also serves on a vehicle fraud committee for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. \u201cThere\u2019s so much money in it that it rivals selling drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n Even though this problem is becoming increasingly well known, fraudsters continue to steal, largely with impunity. Brokers, auto industry insiders, and law enforcement told MIT Technology Review<\/em> that load boards and the USDOT have been too slow to catch and ban bad actors. (In its statement, Cox Automotive said it has been \u201cdedicated to continually enhancing our processes, technology, and education efforts across the industry to fight fraud.\u201d)<\/p>\n Jake MacDonald, who leads Super Dispatch\u2019s fraud monitoring and investigation efforts, put it bluntly on the podcast with Abdullayev: the reason that fraud is \u201cjumping so much\u201d is that \u201cthe industry is slowly moving over to a more technologically advanced position, but it\u2019s so slow that fraud is actually [out-]innovating the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n As it turns out, the person Zahr\u2019s team hired on Central Dispatch didn\u2019t really work for the transport company.\u00a0<\/p>\n After securing the job, the fraudster reposted the orange-and-gray Rolls convertible to a load board. And instead of saying that the car needed to go from Miami to the real destination of Detroit, the new job listed an end point of Hallandale Beach, Florida, just 20 or so miles away. It was a classic case of malicious double-\u00adbrokering: the crooks claimed a load and then reposted it in order to find a new, unsuspecting driver to deliver the car into their possession.<\/p>\n On January 17 of last year, the legitimate driver showed up in a Dodge Ram and loaded the Rolls into an enclosed trailer as Zahr watched.<\/p>\n \u201cThe guy came in and looked very professional, and we took a video of him loading the car, taking pictures of everything,\u201d Zahr told me. He never thought to double-\u00adcheck where the driver was headed or which company he worked for.<\/p>\n Not long after a panicked Zahr spoke with his contact at the transport company he thought he was working with, he reported the car as stolen to the Miami police. Detective Ryan Chin was assigned to the case. It fit with a pattern of high-end auto theft that he and his colleagues had recently been tracking.<\/p>\n \u201cOver the past few weeks, detectives have been made aware of a new method on the rise for vehicles being stolen by utilizing Central Dispatch,\u201d Chin wrote in records obtained by MIT Technology Review<\/em>. \u201cSpecific brokers are re-routing the truck drivers upon them picking up vehicles posted for transport and routing them to other locations provided by the broker.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Chin used Zahr\u2019s photos and video to identify the truck and driver who\u2019d taken the Rolls. By the time police found him, on January 31, the driver had already dropped off Zahr\u2019s Rolls in Hallandale Beach. He\u2019d also picked up and delivered a black Lamborghini Urus and a White Audi R8 for the same client. Each car had been stolen via double-brokering transport fraud, according to court records.\u00a0<\/p>\n The police department declined to comment or to make Chin available for an interview. But a source with knowledge of the case said the driver was \u201csuper cooperative.\u201d (The source asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media, and the driver does not appear to have been identified in court records.)<\/p>\n The driver told police that he had another load to pick up at a dealership in Naples, Florida, later that same day\u2014a second Lamborghini Urus, this one orange. Police later discovered it was supposed to be shipped to California. But the carrier had been hired to bring the car, which retails for about $250,000, to a mall in nearby Aventura. He told police that he suspected it was going to be delivered to the same person who had booked him for the earlier Rolls, Audi, and Lamborghini deliveries, since \u201cthe voice sounds consistent with who [the driver] dealt with prior on the phone.\u201d This drop-off was slated for 4 p.m. at the Waterways Shoppes mall in Aventura.<\/p>\n That was when Chin and a fellow detective, Orlando Rodriguez, decided to set up a sting.\u00a0<\/p>\n The officers and colleagues across three law enforcement agencies quickly positioned themselves in the Waterways parking lot ahead of the scheduled delivery of the Urus. They watched as, pretty much right on schedule that afternoon, the cooperative driver of the Dodge Ram rolled to a stop in the palm-tree-lined lot, which was surrounded by a kosher supermarket, Japanese and Middle Eastern restaurants, and a physiotherapy clinic.<\/p>\n The driver went inside the trailer and emerged in the orange Lamborghini. He parked it and waited near the vehicle.<\/p>\n Roughly 30 minutes later, a green Rolls-Royce Cullinan (price<\/a>: $400,000 and up) arrived with two men and a teenager inside. They got out, opened the trunk, and sat on the tailgate of the vehicle as one man counted cash.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re doing countersurveillance, looking around,\u201d the source told me later. \u201cIt\u2019s a little out of the ordinary, you know. They kept being fixated [on] where the truck was parked.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The transport driver and the three males who arrived in the Rolls-Royce did not interact. But soon enough, another luxury vehicle, a Bentley Continental GT, which last year retailed<\/a> for about $250,000 and up, pulled in. The Bentley driver got out, took the cash from one of the men sitting on the back of the Rolls, and walked over to the transport driver. He handed him $700 and took the keys to the Lamborghini.<\/p>\n That\u2019s when more than a dozen officers swooped in.<\/p>\n \u201cThey had nowhere to go,\u201d the source told me. \u201cWe surrounded them.\u201d<\/p>\n The two men in the Rolls were later identified as Arman Gevorgyan and Hrant Nazarian, and the man in the Bentley as Yuriy Korotovskyy. The three were arrested and charged with dealing in stolen property, grand theft over $100,000, and organized fraud. (The teenager who arrived in the Rolls was Gevorgyan\u2019s son. He was detained and released, according to Richard Cooper, Gevorgyan\u2019s attorney.)<\/p>\n As investigators dug into the case, the evidence suggested that this was part of the criminal pattern they\u2019d been following. \u201cI think it\u2019s organized,\u201d the source told me.<\/p>\n It\u2019s something that transport industry insiders have talked about for a while, according to Fred Mills, the owner of Florida-based Advantage Auto Transport, a company that specializes in transporting high-end vehicles. He said there\u2019s even a slang term to describe people engaged in transport fraud: the flip-flop mafia.\u00a0<\/p>\n It has multiple meanings. One is that the people who show up to transport or accept a vehicle \u201care out there wearing, you know, flip-flops and slides,\u201d Mills says.<\/p>\n The second refers to how fraudsters \u201cflip\u201d from one carrier registration to another as they try to stay ahead of regulators and complaints.<\/p>\n In addition to needing a USDOT number, carriers working across states need an interstate operating authority<\/a> (commonly known as an MC number) from the USDOT. Both IDs are typically printed on the driver and passenger doors. But the rise of \u00addouble-brokering\u2014and of fly-by-night and fraudulent carriers\u2014means that drivers increasingly just tape IDs to their door.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mills says fraudsters will use a USDOT number for 10 or 11 months, racking up violations, and then tape up a new one. \u201cThey just wash, rinse, and repeat,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Decker from the Nevada DMV says a lot of high-end vehicles are stolen because dealerships and individual customers don\u2019t properly check the paperwork or identity of the person who shows up to transport them.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Flip-flop mafia\u2019 is an apt nickname because it\u2019s surprisingly easy to get a car on a truck and convince somebody that they\u2019re a legitimate transport operation when they\u2019re not,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Roughly a month after it disappeared, Zahr\u2019s Rolls-Royce was recovered by the Miami Beach Police. Video footage obtained by a local TV station<\/a> showed the gray car with its distinctive orange top being towed into a police garage.\u00a0<\/p>\n Among the items confiscated from the men in Florida were $10,796 in cash and a GPS jammer. Law enforcement sources say jammers have become a core piece of technology for modern car thieves\u2014necessary to disable the location tracking provided by GPS navigation systems in most cars. \u201cOnce they get the vehicles, they usually park them somewhere [and] put a signal jammer in there or cut out the GPS,\u201d the Florida source told me. This buys them time to swap and reprogram the vehicle identification number (VIN), wipe car computers, and reprogram fobs to remove traces of the car\u2019s provenance.\u00a0<\/p>\n No two VINs are the same, and each is assigned to a specific vehicle by the manufacturer. Where they\u2019re placed inside a vehicle varies by make and model. The NICB\u2019s Woolf says cars also have confidential VINs located in places\u2014including their electronic components\u2014that are supposed to be known only to law enforcement and his organization. But criminals have figured out how to find and change them.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s making it more and more difficult for us to identify vehicles as stolen,\u201d Woolf says. \u201cEvery time we come up with a security measure to prevent the fraudster, they come up with a countermeasure.\u201d<\/p>\n All this doesn\u2019t even take very much time. \u201cIf you know what you\u2019re doing, and you steal the car at one o\u2019clock today, you can have it completely done at two o\u2019clock today,\u201d says Woolf. A vehicle can be rerouted, reprogrammed, re-VINed, and sometimes even retitled before an owner files a police report.<\/p>\n That appears to have been the plan in the case of the stolen light-gray 2023 Lamborghini Hurac\u00e1n owned by the Rockies\u2019 Kris Bryant.<\/p>\n On September 29, 2024, a carrier hired via a load board arrived at Bryant\u2019s home in Cherry Hills, Colorado, to pick up the car. It was supposed to be transported to Bryant\u2019s Las Vegas residence within a few days. It never showed up there\u2014but it was in fact in Vegas.<\/p>\n Using Flock traffic cameras, which capture license plate information in areas across the country, Detective Justin Smith of the Cherry Hills Village Police Department tracked the truck and trailer that had picked up the Lambo to Nevada, and he alerted local police.<\/p>\n On October 7, a Las Vegas officer spotted a car matching the Lamborghini\u2019s description and pulled it over. The driver said the Hurac\u00e1n had been brought to his auto shop by a man whom the police were able to identify as Dat Viet Tieu. They arrested Tieu later that same day. In an interview with police, he identified himself as a car broker. He said he was going to resell the Lamborghini and that he had no idea that the car was stolen, according to the arrest report.\u00a0<\/p>\n Police searched a Jeep Wrangler that Tieu had parked nearby and discovered it had been stolen\u2014and had been re-VINed, retitled, and registered to his wife. Inside the car, police discovered \u201cmultiple fraudulent VIN stickers, key fobs to other high-end stolen vehicles, and fictitious placards,\u201d their report said.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of the fake VINs matched the make and model of Bryant\u2019s Lamborghini. (Representatives for Bryant and the Rockies did not respond to a request for comment.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Tieu was released on bail. But after he returned to LVPD headquarters two days later, on October 9, to reclaim his personal property, officers secretly placed him under surveillance with the hope that he\u2019d lead them to one of the other stolen cars matching the key fobs they\u2019d found in the Jeep.\u00a0<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t take long for them to get lucky. A few hours after leaving the police station, Tieu drove to Harry Reid International Airport, where he picked up an unidentified man. They drove to the Caesars Palace parking garage and pulled in near a GMC Sierra. Over the next three hours, the man worked on a laptop inside and outside the vehicle, according to a police report. At one point, he and Tieu connected jumper cables from Tieu\u2019s rented Toyota Camry to the Sierra.<\/p>\n \u201cAt 2323 hours, the white male adult enters the GMC Sierra, and the vehicle\u2019s ignition starts. It was readily apparent the [two men] had successfully re-programmed a key fob to the GMC Sierra,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n An officer watched as the man gave two key fobs to Tieu, who handed the man an unknown amount of cash. Still, the police let the men leave the garage.\u00a0<\/p>\n The police kept Tieu and his wife under surveillance for more than a week. Then, on October 18, fearing the couple was about to leave town, officers entered Nora\u2019s Italian Restaurant just off the Vegas Strip and took them into custody.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, we meet again,\u201d a detective told Tieu.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not surprised,\u201d Tieu replied.\u00a0<\/p>\n Police later searched the VIN on the Sierra from the Caesars lot and found that it had been reported stolen in Tremonton, Utah, roughly two weeks earlier. They eventually returned both the Sierra and Kris Bryant\u2019s Lamborghini to their owners.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tieu pleaded guilty to two felony counts of possession of a stolen vehicle and one count of defacing, altering, substituting, or removing a VIN. In October, he was sentenced to up to one year of probation; if it\u2019s completed successfully, the plea agreement says, the counts of possession of a stolen vehicle will be dismissed. His attorneys, David Z. Chesnoff and Richard A. Schonfeld, said in a statement that they were \u201cpleased\u201d with the court\u2019s decision, \u201cin light of [Tieu\u2019s] acceptance of responsibility.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Many vehicles stolen via transport fraud are never recovered. Experts say the best way to stop this criminal cycle would be to disrupt it before it starts.\u00a0<\/p>\n That would require significant changes to the way that load boards operate. Bryant\u2019s Lamborghini, Zahr\u2019s and Payne\u2019s Rolls-Royces, and the orange Lamborghini Urus in Florida were all posted for transport on Central Dispatch. Both brokers and shippers argue that the company hasn\u2019t taken enough responsibility for what they characterize as weak oversight.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the crap hits the fan, it\u2019s on us as a broker, or it\u2019s on the trucking company \u2026 they have no liability in the whole transaction process. So it definitely frosted a lot of people\u2019s feathers.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Fred Mills, owner of Florida-based Advantage Auto Transport<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cYou\u2019re Cox Automotive\u2014you\u2019re the biggest car company in the world for dealers\u2014and you\u2019re not doing better screenings when you sign people up?\u201d says Payne. (The spokesperson for Cox Automotive said that it has \u201ca robust verification process for all clients \u2026 who sign up.\u201d)<\/p>\n \u201cIf the crap hits the fan, it\u2019s on us as a broker, or it\u2019s on the trucking company, or the clients\u2019 insurance, [which means] that they have no liability in the whole transaction process,\u201d says Mills. \u201cSo it definitely frosted a lot of people\u2019s feathers.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the last year, Central Dispatch has made changes to further secure its platform. It introduced two-factor authentication for user accounts and started enabling shippers to use its app to track loads in real time, among other measures. It also kicked off an awareness campaign that includes online educational content and media appearances to communicate that the company takes its responsibilities seriously.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve removed over 500 accounts already in 2025, and we\u2019ll continue to take any of that aggressive action where it\u2019s needed,\u201d said Lainey Sibble, Central Dispatch\u2019s head of business, in a sponsored episode<\/a> of the Auto Remarketing Podcast<\/em>. \u201cWe also recognize this is not going to happen in a silo. Everyone has a role to play here, and it\u2019s really going to take us all working together in partnership to combat this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n Mills says Central Dispatch got faster at shutting down fraudulent accounts toward the end of last year. But it\u2019s going to take time to fix the industry, he adds: \u201cI compare it to a 15-year opioid addiction. It\u2019s going to take a while to detox the system.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Yariv, the broker in West Palm Beach, says he has stopped using Central Dispatch and other load boards altogether. \u201cOne person has access here, and that\u2019s me. I don\u2019t even log in,\u201d he told me. His team has gone back to working the phones, as evidenced by the din of voices in the background as we spoke.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp.technologyreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/MITReview-spo1.jpg?w=2975\")
\nOut-innovating the industry<\/h3>\n
\n
A Florida sting<\/h3>\n
What happens in Vegas<\/h3>\n
Taking the heat<\/h3>\n
\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp.technologyreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/MITReview-spo2.jpg?w=2498\")
\n