The Massive Heist You_ve Never Heard of - The Sand Mafia

In February 2010, traffic on the roadway connecting Singapore to southern Malaysia came to a standstill because 37 trucks had been abandoned on the Malaysian side, their drivers having simply walked away. Customs officials were only a few yards from the trucks, and when they investigated, they found the vehicles filled with contraband—not drugs, not diamonds, not undocumented migrants, but sand. The same coarse, grainy stuff that gets everywhere. This was the first major public glimpse into a multi-billion dollar black market that most people in the Western world have never heard of: the sand mafia.

Why sand became the most wanted raw material

Singapore is one of the 20 smallest states in the world, three and a half times the size of Washington, DC, but with nearly eight times as many inhabitants. Since its independence from Malaysia in 1965, the country has become one of the world's wealthiest nations, a premier business, financial, and shipping hub. But with a population of over six million people crammed into a tiny footprint, the country needed to expand. Rather than building vertically, Singapore chose to expand horizontally through land reclamation—the process of creating new land from oceans and rivers. Since the 1960s, the country has increased its land area by 24 percent, from 581.5 square kilometers to 732.2 square kilometers, and plans to add another 100 square