New Jersey Spray Drone Theft Ends With Recovery, But No Arrests as Federal Investigation Stays Open

New Jersey State Police have recovered all fifteen agricultural spray drones stolen from a Harrison warehouse last month, but the investigation is far from closed. The drones were found April 27 inside Prudent Corporation‘s storage facility in Dover, roughly 30 miles from where they went missing on March 24. No arrests have been announced. The FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and Customs and Border Protection remain involved.

The recovery came not from law enforcement tracking the aircraft down, but from workers at the Dover warehouse who noticed the drones and called police. According to ABC7, the fifteen units had been sitting at Prudent Corporation since the day of the theft, apparently undisturbed for over a month before anyone reported them.

How the Theft Happened

The drones were not taken in a break-in. Someone presented a fraudulent bill of lading at CAC International, the Harrison logistics and shipping company where the aircraft were stored. The forged shipping documents came with a confirmation message, and CAC staff accepted the pickup as legitimate. Fifteen Ceres Air C31 agricultural sprayers, each valued at $58,000, walked out the door on paper.

That method matters. Document fraud at a logistics facility is a different threat profile from a physical break-in. It requires knowledge of the consignment, the ability to forge credible shipping paperwork, and access to whatever confirmation system CAC International used to verify pickups. None of that is improvised.

What the Official Statement Says

New Jersey State Police issued a formal statement confirming the recovery: “On April 27th, the New Jersey State Police Cargo Theft Unit recovered 15 stolen agricultural drones and spray systems. These drones are labeled as agricultural drones due to their specified function as registered crop dusters. The theft occurred on March 24th at CAC International, a logistics and shipping company located in Harrison, NJ. The drones were recovered at Prudent Corporation located in Dover, NJ. This is an active, ongoing investigation that Homeland Security Investigations and Customs and Border Patrol are assisting with. No additional information is available.”

Prudent Corporation provides warehouse storage, trucking services, and licensed commercial moving. The company did not respond to media requests for comment. Whether it had any knowledge of what it was storing, or whether the drones were placed there without the company’s awareness, has not been addressed publicly.

Why the FBI Got Involved

As DroneXL reported on April 23, the FBI’s concern centered on what these machines are built to do. Each Ceres Air C31 is a GPS-guided crop sprayer capable of dispersing 31 gallons of liquid across 15 acres in eight minutes. Retired FBI agent Steve Lazarus told national security journalists at The High Side that the bureau was “freaked out for a good reason,” describing the aircraft as “industrial sprayers designed to carry and disperse significant amounts of liquid quickly and with precision.”

That capability maps almost directly onto a chemical dispersal scenario. The threat model is not new — counterterrorism officials have worried about agricultural spraying platforms since the post-9/11 era, when the focus was on manned crop-duster aircraft. The 2026 version involves GPS-automated vehicles that require minimal operator involvement during a run. The theft of fifteen of them, using forged documents at an international logistics facility, was never going to stay at the county sheriff level.

What Remains Unresolved

Authorities have not confirmed whether all fifteen units are intact or whether any equipment was modified after the theft. No suspect information has been released. The official statement does not address motive, and no charges have been filed.

The involvement of Homeland Security Investigations alongside Customs and Border Protection suggests investigators have a theory that goes beyond standard cargo theft. HSI handles transnational criminal operations, smuggling, and large-scale freight fraud — and CAC International is an international logistics company, which places it squarely within HSI’s routine jurisdiction. That context alone does not confirm anything sinister, but it does mean the federal agencies best suited to trace where an international shipment goes next are the ones running the investigation.

DroneXL’s Take

The recovery is good news. Fifteen spray drones with a chemical dispersal capability were unaccounted for for over a month. They are now in law enforcement custody. That closes the most alarming chapter of this case.

The method of recovery complicates the narrative, though. Warehouse workers noticed the drones and called it in. The aircraft had been sitting at Prudent Corporation since March 24, apparently unremarkable enough that no one flagged them for weeks. That is either a sign the theft was intended as a long-term storage arrangement before resale or transfer, or it means whoever moved them had no immediate plan for what to do next. Both interpretations keep the investigation open.

There is also a supply-side dimension worth noting. The Ceres Air C31 is American-made. This case does not involve DJI or any platform on the FCC’s Covered List. But as I covered in January when the FCC ban began hitting agricultural operators, domestic manufacturers including Ceres Air are operating in a constrained production environment. The $870,000 fleet the victim lost cannot simply be reordered from a Chinese supplier. Replacement timelines from a domestic manufacturer with limited production capacity are a real operational problem — one the FCC ban made worse for the entire agricultural spray market, regardless of who the theft victim turns out to be.

The larger question this case has not yet answered is whether the fraudulent bill of lading points toward an organized freight fraud ring, a targeted operation with a specific end use for the aircraft, or something investigators have not yet disclosed. The official statement does not hint at which direction the case is moving. Watch for charges, which will carry the jurisdictional and statutory language that finally puts a label on what this was.

Sources: NJ1015, Fox News, ABC7 New York

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.