Retail Executives, Lawmakers & Law Enforcement Hold ORC Roundtable
The group is calling for the passage of the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act

'Theft for greed, not theft for need,' Organized retail crime rising while related bill awaits action

Recent legislation awaiting action seeks to deter these thefts in the first place.

Power tools are locked and caged at the Charleston Boulevard Home Depot. Store Manager Larry Jensen said, "We would have never had to do something like this" five years ago. After 12 years with the company, he said thieves more and more are taking merchandise and threatening associates who catch them in the act with violence or weapons.

The National Retail Federation reports ORC has skyrocketed by 50% from 2015 to 2020. During a roundtable discussion about ORC at Jensen's Home Depot location Wednesday morning, Nevada Congresswoman Susie Lee said it left the state with the $85 million tax revenue loss. Nevada Congresswoman Dina Titus added that over $100 million in stolen merchandise was lost just in 2022.

During the store tour of locked-up products, Scott Glenn, who is vice president of asset protection for Home Depot nationally, told the congresspeople that ORC is "costing us a couple of billion dollars" with only 5% of those products being recovered.

He associates the rise in crime with not enough legal repercussions for thieves and third-party online marketplaces that allow anonymous sales.

"This is basically theft for greed, not theft for need," Glenn said during the roundtable. "These crimes are linked to other broader crimes such as gun running, drug trafficking, and human trafficking."

Raul O. Aguilar of Homeland Security said during the roundtable that "Operation Boiling Point" was established in late 2021 to combat ORC, which initiated 119 criminal arrests, 71 indictments, and $6 million worth of recovery stolen goods in FY 2022.

Now, lawmakers are awaiting action on HR 895, or the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act introduced in February 2023. If passed, sponsors say the bill would strengthen federal coordination during these investigations, make ORC a federal offense, and heighten penalties in hopes it will deter the crime.

The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2023 is before the Judiciary Committee with 60 co-sponsors split almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans. 8newsnow.com


Retail Crime Spotlighted in Nationally Televised Town Hall
Crime is the second largest issue Americans are worried about.

Theft Offenders 'Need to Know They Will Face Repercussions'
Swift consequences needed to combat retail crime, mayor says

53% of shoppers believe retail crime is worse in their community

More than half of consumers think retail crimes like shopping or looting stores have surged in their community since the onset of the pandemic, a National Retail Federation survey found.

According to the survey, 75% of shoppers reported being in stores where products were locked up and 79% believe retail thefts impact the prices of what they buy.

Deborah, a "Crime in America" town hall participant, has had two businesses in New York City for 35 years. She says her stores have been robbed multiple times. "People come in, they put clothing under their shirts, and they run out of your store. It's so jarring," she said.

Hartford, Connecticut Mayor Luke Bronin thinks offenders need to know they will face repercussions if they commit a crime.

"Sometimes, what's most important is that there are swift and reliable consequences," Bronin told NewsNation host Chris Cuomo. "It's not about the severity of them. It's about the fact that there are consequences that you can count on."

A NewsNation and Decision Desk HQ poll of registered voters found crime was the second largest issue Americans are worried about. newsnationnow.com


'Rampant crime has become a regular part of life'
The nationwide retail exodus continues as store theft remains a top problem

Here's why retailers say they're fleeing the San Francisco area
America's most-robbed Walgreens was the victim of at least three thefts within 30 minutes in July, according to CNN Senior National Correspondent Kyung Lah - one of the latest examples of brazen crime at the location.

According to Lah, Walgreens has identified this location as having the "highest theft rate" - hit more than a dozen times a day - of the pharmacy chain's nearly 9,000 U.S. stores.

A retail exodus

Several retail giants - including Nordstrom, H&M, Marshall's, Gap, Banana Republic, Anthropologie and Office Depot - have announced they're pulling the plug on some San Francisco locations.

When Whole Foods announced in mid-April that it was temporarily closing its store at Trinity Place in the city's Tenderloin District, a spokesperson for the grocer expressed concerns about "the safety of our team members" due to criminal activity near the store.

These issues, while significant in San Francisco, are not isolated to the Bay Area. According to a study by the National Retail Federation, organized retail crime and theft are growing in both scope and complexity across the U.S.

Concern for commercial real estate

Many cities have seen retail store closures in recent months. Insider recently reported that as many as 2,373 major retail stores are set to close this year across the U.S - not all down to crime, but some due to dwindling foot traffic in the age of online shopping and economic factors like rising interest rates.

These trends are causing headaches for commercial real estate investors, since they present more challenges for the already shaky and debt-ridden sector.  finance.yahoo.com


For the Academics: Automated ORC Detection
Research study: numeric-based machine learning design for detecting organized retail fraud in digital marketplaces
Organized retail crime (ORC) is a significant issue for retailers, marketplace platforms, and consumers. Its prevalence and influence have increased fast in lockstep with the expansion of online commerce, digital devices, and communication platforms.

Today, it is a costly affair, wreaking havoc on enterprises' overall revenues and continually jeopardizing community security. These negative consequences are set to rocket to unprecedented heights as more people and devices connect to the Internet. Detecting and responding to these terrible acts as early as possible is critical for protecting consumers and businesses while also keeping an eye on rising patterns and fraud.

Retail organized crime has been a persistent cybersecurity issue for e-commerce platforms such as Meta's Marketplace and eBay, among others. With the growing amount of data available on users' attributes and transaction histories, it's becoming increasingly difficult to spot fraudulent actions using filtering rules and key word search and refinement.

In our research, we proposed an automated fraud detection method for detecting possible frauds in the organized retail crime space using a supervised machine learning approach. We demonstrated that our system outperformed past systems based on rule-based and unsupervised learning approaches in terms of prediction accuracy and efficacy.

To the best of our knowledge, this approach has not been applied in ORC settings, and where it has been applied in other contexts, majority of cases have only used single-stage trials for data processing and/or imbalance learning. In our case, we demonstrated how to optimize a fraud detection modeling system by combining expert informed feature discovery, bespoke data processing, imbalanced learning, feature, and model selection, customized hyperparameter setup, and business-oriented assessment metrics to achieve state-of-the-art performance.

Read the full report here: nature.com


Online LP & Theft Training
Dealers can access NHPA online training to combat theft
The average hardware store in the U.S. loses nearly $47,000 (or 1.6 percent of sales) each year to shrinkage, according to the 2022 Cost of Doing Business Study from the North American Hardware and Paint Association (NHPA). The problem has been getting worse in recent years, mostly due to an increase in shoplifting.

Another study, by the (U.S.) National Retail Federation, reveals that nearly one-third of retail shrink comes from employee theft. Employees can steal money from the cash register or product from the sales floor. Advances in surveillance technology have made it easier to catch and prosecute thieves, but prevention remains the best strategy.

NHPA recently updated its three courses in loss prevention, which cover internal theft, external theft, and store safety. The courses feature a new format and include updates on the latest trends and technologies in loss prevention. hardlines.ca


Retail Thefts Causing Alarm Across Southern Calif.
From Gucci to jewelry, recent string of retail thefts across SoCal prompts concern
Shocking video showing a group of men stealing from a Gucci store in Century City has sparked serious concern among business owners, shoppers and law enforcement. The video, which was posted on the Citizen app, shows the men rushing out of the store with several luxury bags and suitcases. The Los Angeles Police Department said the group involved nine people.

On the same day in Irvine, surveillance cameras caught three suspects rush into the Jewels By Alan jewelry store. The thieves, who were wearing all black and had their faces covered, used hammers to shatter the glass displays.

"It kind of just shows you the mentality that they either don't think they're going to get caught or they don't care if they get caught," Davies said. The National Retail Federation notes that three of the top 10 cities for retail crime are in California, with Los Angeles taking the top spot. abc7.com


July Saw The Third Most Mass Shootings In One Month Since 2020

Family-owned hardware store lost $700K in just one year due to retail theft

OSHA Continues to Zero in on Dollar General Stores
The retail chain has faced more than $21 million in fines from 243 inspections since 2017

Dollar General workers at a Florida store were left without a working restroom, OSHA says

A Dollar General store in Florida was cited for seven violations by OSHA inspectors.

Dollar General workers at one of its Florida stores were left without a working restroom, according to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

Federal inspectors visited the discount store in Brandon, Florida back in January, where they found a total of seven violations. These were issued to the company in May.

That included the serious violation of not providing workers with a working restroom, which OSHA says exposed "employees to adverse health effects and sanitation hazards."

An OSHA document says the inoperative lavatory was corrected during the inspection, but it still proposed a $7,366 fine.

The store's largest proposed fine came from a repeat violation of obstructing exit routes, for which OSHA wants to fine Dollar General $156,259.

In a press release earlier this month, OSHA slammed the retail chain for facing more than $21 million in fines from 243 inspections since 2017. An OSHA spokesperson told Retail Dive that the chain has paid $4 million of the fines it owes. The company has the option to contest these citations and fines. businessinsider.com


Self-Checkout-Only Stores Becoming More Popular
What are the LP implications of self-checkout only stores?

​​Does Kroger Face a Self-Checkout-Only Future?
Kroger converted a store in Tennessee to self-checkout only, following its first test of a cashierless concept in Dallas in 2021.

A Kroger spokesperson told WKRN that the location in Franklin, about 20 minutes from Nashville, was converted because of the rate of customers already using self-checkout. "These allow our customers to scan and bag their own items," she said. "It's a fast, friendly experience."

Among other retailers, Walmart and Dollar General are also both piloting exclusively self-checkout stores, while Amazon continues to test its "Just Walk Out" technology largely at Amazon Fresh and Go locations.

Last fall, Albertsons began testing a self-checkout-only store in Boise, Idaho, that guides customers to self-checkouts based on their basket size: 10 items or fewer, around 15 items, and 20 items or more. Hy-Vee has also converted many of its stores to primarily self-checkout stations, with the terminals able to be converted to manned checkout when busy.

Self-checkout options increased during the pandemic due to social distancing concerns and advances in automation, as well as to help retailers better manage high labor shortages and costs. For customers, self-scanning can reduce wait times. retailwire.com


Upcoming Holiday Shooting Season: A Mixed Bag for Retail?
What's working for - and against - retailers heading into the holidays?

This shopping season isn't likely to be like last year, or the year before, or the year before that, experts say.

As the summer winds down, retailers are preparing for the all-important back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons. So far in 2023, despite inflation, economic uncertainty and a prioritization of spending on experiences over goods, consumers have come through pretty well for the industry. Yet, even with the first half of the year over, it's hard to know what's ahead.

That's in part because recent holidays aren't providing many clues, according to Meghann Martindale, head of retail research at Madison Marquette.

During the height of the pandemic in 2020, people stuck at home spent mostly on goods; the 2021 holiday season helped launch a year of splurging, including refreshing closets; and, in 2022, despite inflation, holiday shoppers were by and large still in the mood to spend. But this holiday isn't likely to be like last year, or the year before, or the year before that, she said by phone.

First, the good news

Inflation is down - Consumer sentiment is up - A UPS strike averted - Consumers want to 'return to normal'

And some of the challenges

Consumers are keen to find deals - Some retailers at risk as student loan forgiveness ends - The 'anti-woke mob' is still out there  retaildive.com


McKinsey & Company
Middle managers are the heart of your company

Stop thinking of middle management as a way station. Instead, make it a destination.

In particular, the middle layer of management is suffering from these false beliefs-and for three main reasons:

1. Senior leadership feels a magnetic pull to promote top middle managers into positions where they no longer do what they love: coach and connect people.

2. Senior leaders persist in promoting their best individual contributors, without considering their fitness for a people leadership role.

3. Middle managers who do stay in their jobs find themselves pinioned by administrative tasks and stymied by leaders who won't empower them to make changes.

Unfortunately, the word "middle" implies that the person in that spot is on the way to somewhere else-ideally, the top. That thinking is misguided. Instead, we need to view middle managers as being at the center of the action. Without their ability to connect and integrate people and tasks, an organization can cease to function effectively. That's why we think the best middle managers are best off staying exactly where they are-like Marcus, who refused to accept the prevailing belief systems about management.

Without the ability of middle managers to connect and integrate people and tasks, an organization can cease to function effectively. mckinsey.com

First look inside redesigned Amazon Fresh grocery stores in Chicago

Instacart slashes its shopper pay rates from $7 to $4

Minneapolis, MN: Romanian mobster swindled Twin Cities retailers out of thousands of dollars using sleight of hand, charges say
Prosecutors allege a woman belonging to a Romanian organized crime group stole thousands of dollars from Twin Cities retailers using a sleight of hand scheme. Baronita Rostas, 24, is charged with one count of theft by swindle, according to court documents filed Tuesday. A criminal complaint filed by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office alleges Rostas swindled stores in Eagan, Roseville, Albertville, Maple Grove, St. Louis Park, Woodbury, and Richfield, causing a total loss of $6,280 to the retailers between March and July of this year.

Rostas' alleged scheme, as described in the criminal complaint, was to bring merchandise to the cashier to purchase, then hand over multiple stacks of $20. She would then ask to recount the bills, ask the cashier for the total and discreetly remove bills from the stack while the cashier was checking the register screen. After completing the transaction, Rostas allegedly walked away having paid less than the total and receiving change from the cashier. She also would later return the merchandise at a different store, prosecutors allege.
The criminal complaint states Rostas performed this scheme across the country.

"This is a complex case, involving several agencies and a significant amount of work," Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said. "This sort of high-volume, organized fraud has a significant impact on businesses and their employees, and ultimately impacts all of us through higher prices." She was arrested Friday at a hotel in St. Louis Park where she had been staying with her husband. Authorities found "large amounts of cash and extensive retail merchandise, receipt, and gift cards" in her car, the complaint states.  cbsnews.com


San Francisco, CA: DOJ: Robbery Crew Charged With Perpetrating $1.1 Million Jewelry Heist
According to a federal criminal complaint, filed July 21, 2023, and unsealed at the initial appearance, Faavesi, 30, Montgomery, 35, Tonga, 33, Tupou, 30, and Vehikite, 34, planned and executed the armed heist, which involved at least eleven individuals, some armed, taking approximately $1.1 million in stolen watches and jewelry from the family-owned San Ramon jewelry store. The complaint alleges that while some of the participants were inside the store or immediately outside it during the armed robbery, others acted as lookouts and get-away drivers of at least four waiting vehicles. The robbery took place at a bustling mall in San Ramon in the middle of the afternoon and resulted in multiple bystanders, including children, fleeing the masked and armed robbers.  justice.gov


Jonesboro, AR: $9K in stolen Baby Formula seized during Arkansas traffic stop
Nearly $9,000 worth of stolen baby formula was seized during a traffic stop in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Wednesday. Jonesboro police said they confiscated 430 cans of baby formula that were shoplifted from several stores and took three people into custody. The Jonesboro Police Department posted pictures of the seizure on its Facebook page and congratulated the officers involved in the stop. Police have not identified the individuals arrested but said they are facing felony charges of theft by receiving greater than $5,000, continuing criminal enterprise, and theft less than $1,000.  wreg.com


Newington, CT: Bloomfield man hacked Wood-n-Tap gift card system, redeemed $20,000
A Bloomfield man was arrested and charged after police said he gained access to more than $200,000 in unauthorized Wood-n-Tap gift cards, spending more than $20,000 of that money over the course of a few years. On Wednesday, the suspect, 34-year-old Calvin Ortique, was charged with Computer Crimes in the 1st Degree, Forgery in the 1st Degree, Identity Theft in the 1st Degree, Larceny in the 1st Degree, and Conspiracy to Larceny in the 1st Degree. The State Department of Transportation has confirmed that Ortique is one of its employees. The online payroll database reports that he is a transportation rail officer for the state. "This has been a long journey. We expect it to continue," said Phil Barnett, Co-CEO & Co-Founder of the Hartford Restaurant Group, which owns Wood-n-Tap.Barnett said he and his team started to notice something was off in 2021 when customers were reporting that their gift card balances were depleting without them ever spending a dime. In their investigation, Newington Police found that Ortique allegedly hacked into a point-of-sale system that managed loyalty and gift card numbers and redeemed more than $20,000 in value at the Newington Wood-n-Tap and at least six other Wood-n-Tap locations beginning in 2020.   fox61.com


Memphis, TN: Beauty supply store worker tased during $1300 hair heist
Police say a woman wielding a box taser stole $1,300 worth of hair and hair products from a beauty supply store in Whitehaven Sunday afternoon. An employee at Beauty and Company said the woman came into the store, grabbed the hair, headed toward the door, and tased her when she tried to stop her from leaving. The clerk was treated on the scene for her injuries.  wreg.com


Somerset, MA: Police investigating $1000 theft of flooring from The Home Depot