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IAFCI Annual Spotlight on Fraud Conference

The International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators (IAFCI) Connecticut Chapter annual Spotlight on Fraud Conference is set for June 9-10, 2022 at Mohegan Sun Casino Uncasville, CT. This is a great opportunity to hear about some recent financial crime trends and how to address and prevent them.

Not only retail crime but also cryptocurrency, social media investigations and many more presentations. This is also a great opportunity to network with various branches of federal, state and local law enforcement and the financial investigators industry. Come and hear some awesome presentations.

Conference Agenda | Registration Information
 

The Retail Crime Epidemic Continues to Surge Globally

Shoplifting Apprehensions Down, Dollars Recovered Up
Survey: Less retail thieves caught but more dollars recovered in 2021
Shoplifting apprehensions decreased 16.2% in 2021, but the total amount of dollars recovered from shoplifters and dishonest employees — including apprehended and non-apprehended individuals — jumped 30.7%.

That’s one of the findings of Jack L. Hayes International's 34th Annual Retail Theft Survey, which reviewed 200,000 shoplifters and dishonest employee apprehensions in 2021 by 25 large retail companies. The participating retailers apprehended 204,404 shoplifters and dishonest employees in 2021, down 12.8% from 2020.

The participating retailers in the survey recovered more than $240 million from apprehended shoplifters and dishonest employees in 2021, up 9.9% from 2020. The dollars recovered from shoplifters where no apprehension was made was $339 million, up an “astounding” 51.1% in 2021, according to the survey.

“Shoplifting recoveries without an apprehension were driven in 2021 by multiple retailers focusing more on recoveries — get the thief to drop the merchandise and leave the store — and less on actual apprehension of the thieves,” explained Mark R. Doyle, president of Jack L. Hayes, a loss prevention and inventory shrinkage control firm.

Several issues led to this re-focus in 2021, Doyle added, including the pandemic environment (staying six feet away from customers and thieves), staff safety (shoplifters are getting more violent so some retailers moved away from apprehensions) and lower/less police response, with police not responding to some shoplifter calls.

“As a result, stores focused on getting product back instead of making apprehension,” Doyle said.

Average case values increased substantially in 2021, according to the report. The value for total thefts rose 26.0%, while the value increased 26.6% for shoplifting and rose 22.6% for dishonest employees.

Click here to read the D&D Daily initial reporting of the survey

Retail Violence Explodes Across the Pond
Violence and Abuse Against UK Shop Workers Tripled Over Pandemic

One in 10 cases involved violence against staff & costs of retail crime in 12-month period totaled $1.9 billion

Cases of violence and abuse against UK retail workers almost tripled during the pandemic to about 1,300 incidents a day.

That’s according to a survey by the British Retail Consortium, which showed almost one in 10 daily incidents involved violence against store staff, with only 4% of occurrences resulting in prosecution. Three in five respondents said the police response to these incidents was “poor” or “very poor,” according to the study, which covered the 12 months through March 2021.

The abuse was largely confined to essential shops such as supermarkets and pharmacies, which stayed open during the pandemic while non-essential retail stores were forced to close. This prompted the UK government to amend the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to include incidents committed against workers providing a public service.

“These figures make particularly grim reading as they came at the height of the pandemic when the ‘hidden heroes’ of retail were working tirelessly,” said Helen Dickinson, chief executive officer of the BRC. “It is shocking that this huge rise in incidents took place in a smaller pool of stores as much of the industry was in lockdown.”

A survey released last week showed one in five retail workers is planning to quit due to concerns around their finances, abuse from customers and poor mental health throughout the pandemic. A quarter of managers also want to leave the industry, the survey showed.

Alongside the emotional and physical impact on retail workers is the financial hit to the industry. The total cost of retail crime stood at £1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) in the 12-month period, with £663 million lost to customer theft and £715 million spent on crime prevention, according to the BRC. bloomberg.com

Virginia AG Makes ORC Fight Top Priority
AG Miyares sets up new work group to investigate organized retail crime
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is convening a work group to take a look at organized retail crime in Virginia, a problem he says is harming businesses across the Commonwealth.

"We saw in Fairfax last month, over 20,000 eyeglasses frames were stolen just in Fairfax," he says. "Arlington detectives recovered over 89,000 stolen goods from just T.J. Maxx alone."

Organized retail crime is a growing problem for businesses across the state. Major retailers in the Commonwealth and across the country report an increase in organized criminal activity.

Goods stolen from stores are resold quickly online. And Attorney General Jason Miyares says retail crime can be a gateway to other illegal activities.

“A lot of times people will groom young victims to do some of these smash and grab situations, and often if you find an organized retail crime ring, you also see that they are involved in a lot of other nefarious activities, trafficking in narcotics, trafficking in people,” Miyares told WDBJ7 in an interview Tuesday afternoon.

Miyares said everyone is paying more at big box retailers and drug stores to make up for their losses. He said he hopes the working group can identify best practices for businesses, and potential legislation to address the problem. whsv.com

   VA Legislature returns and seeks to combat ‘organized retail crime’

   Behind the Story: Busting ‘organized retail crime’


The Mass Shooting Data Continues to Trickle In

Over a Dozen Mass Shootings Over Holiday Weekend
9 killed, more than 60 injured in Memorial Day weekend mass shootings

The Gun Violence Archive said it recorded at least 14 mass shootings, in which four or more victims were shot or killed, across the nation over the long weekend.

Amid calls for gun control after last week's massacre at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school, shots rang out across the country over the Memorial Day weekend, with more than a dozen mass shootings in the span of 72 hours.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings in the United States, there were at least 14 "mass shootings" in the country over the weekend, from early Saturday to late Monday.

The archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which "four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter."

At least nine people were killed in the shootings, with more than 60 injured, according to the organization's data.

A preliminary count found that gun violence — not just mass shootings — left at least 156 people dead and 412 injured from 5 p.m. ET Friday to 5 a.m. Tuesday, the archive said.

The spate of shootings over the Memorial Day weekend came amid growing calls for gun reforms in the wake of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24 that left 19 children and two teachers dead. nbcnews.com

Kickoff to a Violent Summer?
Chicago experienced its most violent Memorial Day weekend in five years

Ten people were killed and 42 were wounded — despite stepped up police patrols and a focus on neighborhood programs.

Chicago experienced its most violent Memorial Day weekend in five years — 10 killed, 42 wounded — despite stepped up police patrols and a focus on neighborhood programs that city officials hoped would provide peaceful alternatives.

About half of those shot were on the West Side, most of them in a single police district, the 11th, where there were two mass shootings on Sunday. On the South Side, at least 14 people were shot. And downtown, where there has been a spike in shootings all year, four people were hit by gunfire.

The weekend was the most violent since 2017, when seven people were killed and 45 people were wounded, according to Chicago police data. The year before, 69 people had been shot over the long holiday weekend.

This past weekend’s toll is sharply higher than last year, when three people were killed and 34 others were wounded.

The Chicago Police Department canceled days off over the weekend, but Police Supt. David Brown was vague last Friday about the numbers of additional police officers assigned to work. wbez.org

17 Mass Shootings Reported Since Uvalde Massacre
Philadelphia & Chicago Lead the Way on Holiday Weekend Shootings

14 fatally shot in Philly, 9 killed in Chicago

Even as the first funerals of the 21 victims of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting were commencing, gunfire continued to wreak havoc across the United States over the Memorial Day weekend as police in eight major cities investigated incidents in which three or more people were shot, including 16 children.

The gun violence was especially acute in Philadelphia and Chicago, where police departments in both cities dispatched officers to more than 40 shootings between Friday afternoon and Monday night.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, a website that keeps track of shootings across the country, there have been 17 episodes across the nation in which four or more people have been shot since the Uvalde mass shooting on May 24.  abcnews.go.com

   US mass shootings will continue until the majority can overrule the minority

   Eight warnings behaviors of a potential mass shooter

US: 85.9M Cases - 1M Dead - 82.2M Recovered
Worldwide: 532.9M Cases - 6.3M Dead - 504M Recovered

Former Senior Loss Prevention Executive
Know of any fallen LP exec? Let's remember & recognize.

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 358  
Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 774
*Red indicates change in total deaths

COVID: Forgotten But Not Gone
U.S. COVID Cases Are 5 Times Higher Now Than Last Memorial Day Weekend

As omicron and its subvariants rapidly moves through the U.S., reported cases are surpassing 110,000 a day, though the number is far higher due to a lack of testing

Throughout the U.S., precautions for COVID-19 such as mask mandates and vaccine requirements have been largely dropped, and Americans are almost entirely back to their pre-pandemic activities. Yet cases are actually higher now than this time last year, when half of the country was newly vaccinated and before the omicron variant had struck.

This Memorial Day weekend, the reported number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. was easily above 110,000 a day, five times that of the year before, when the average number of cases hovered around 20,000 a day. The daily average is also now a significant undercount, with most people testing positive on rapid tests that go unreported or foregoing testing altogether.

Despite the rise in cases, hospitalizations and deaths have largely remained stagnant, and are still lower than last year. With around 67% of the country fully vaccinated — which is still far lower than what health experts hoped — and omicron producing a milder illness than past versions of COVID-19, the U.S. is seeing around 300 deaths a day, down from around 550 last year.  people.com

Retail Foot Traffic Rise Amid COVID Bounceback
In boon to retail, office workers and tourists are heading back downtown
In a sign of a major comeback for downtown retail, office workers and tourists have steadily returned to major U.S. cities through the first half of the year, though most are lagging their pre-pandemic normal, according to an urban retail recovery report from commercial real estate company JLL.

New York’s Times Square, where foot traffic is up 186.2% year over year, and San Francisco’s Union Square (up 101.4%) have enjoyed the biggest rebounds. In Chicago, foot traffic is up 73.5% at Fulton Market and 54.9% on Michigan Avenue. In Los Angeles, Melrose and the Third Street Promenade each have gains topping 50%.

The recovery has been fueled by dining and has been weather dependent, with gains mounting as temps climb. That’s helped Miami, which has been surpassing its pre-pandemic traffic. The Design District is “the only urban retail corridor to consistently outperform 2019 levels,” with footfall well above 2019 since last year, JLL found.

In 2021, some tourists took advantage of lifted lockdowns and still-affordable travel and some employees trickled back to the office. But whether urban retail would ever recover has remained unclear. Some analysts believe the optimal place to open a store has become the neighborhood, as so many people continue to work from home.

But others have believed — or, at least, hoped — that classic downtown activity would resume as the pandemic subsided. retaildive.com

Lockdown Lifting at Last
Shanghai to lift COVID lockdown: ‘Hard to believe it’s actually happening’
Shanghai authorities on Tuesday began dismantling fences around housing compounds and ripping police tape off public squares and buildings before the lifting of a two-month lockdown in China’s largest city at midnight.

Most will be stuck indoors again until midnight as they have been for the past two months under a strictly enforced lockdown that has caused income losses and stress and despair to people struggling to access food or get emergency healthcare.

The prolonged isolation has fueled public anger and rare protests inside the city of 25 million people and battered its manufacturing and export-heavy economy, disrupted supply chains in China and around the world, and slowed international trade. nypost.com

DOJ asks court to reverse rule lifting mask requirement for public transportation

China’s factory activity decline slows as COVID curbs ease

NYC's Retail Ghost Town - But Signs of Hope
Empty NYC retail spaces cast pall on key shopping corridors
There’s “growing demand from a diverse range of retailers” for Manhattan storefronts, the Real Estate Board of New York crows in its spring 2022 survey of retail activity. The claim might be true, but growing demand doesn’t immediately or necessarily translate into a big reduction in the number of vacant stores.

The metrics for the past six months cited by REBNY definitely show improvement. Average asking rents per square foot in nine of 17 major shopping corridors grew from the fall of 2021 — suggesting that the market is stabilizing after two years of declining rents.

For all the new leases, store windows in many Manhattan areas — residential and commercial — remain full of “Prime Retail Space” signs.

Long slices of Broadway look abandoned at sidewalk level. While its Soho portion thrives (along with the rest of Soho), Broadway south of Canal Street has precious few actual stores beyond hair salons and a few funky art galleries.

Madison Avenue still reels from the losses of Barneys, Brooks Brothers and most recently, Harman Kardon. Empty windows haunt pedestrians, especially in the East 60s.

Vacant storefronts actually outnumber filled ones in parts of the FiDi area. The closing of Century 21 — which supposedly will reopen with much less space next year — cast a pall across from the World Trade Center. Fulton Street can boast of thriving Brookfield Place and the rejuvenated South Street Seaport at its east and west ends, but between them lies a depressing sea of vacancies. Even neighborhood fast-food places and shoe-repair shops closed and have yet to be replaced.

So while it’s legitimate to assert that a nascent recovery is taking place, let no one think that all those “for rent” signs will disappear soon. nypost.com

No Staff, No Problem
Dollar General piloting self-checkout-only stores
Dollar General recently started piloting self-checkout as the sole way to make purchases at select stores, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Owen said Thursday during the discount retailer’s first-quarter earnings call.

The test will involve about 200 of Dollar General’s more than 18,000 locations throughout the rest of the year, Owen said. The trial comes as the discounter expands self-checkout overall, with plans to have the units, which were in more than 8,000 stores at the end of Q1, in 11,000 stores by the end of the year, Owen added.

Dollar General is stepping up the deployment of automation in its stores as the company works to mitigate challenges brought on by persistent supply chain issues and inflation. Dollar General’s test of stores without staffed checkout counters comes as the retailer deals with rising costs and strives to remain attractive to its core customer base.

The company added 239 new stores during the quarter and is on track to debut 1,110 locations in 2022, according to Owen. retaildive.com

Retail 'Resilience'
Widespread Reports of ‘Resilience’ Lift Hopes in Battered Retail Industry
The parade of retail executives invoking “resilience” in their earnings reports last week was as long as it was diverse. In what was a literal stream of verbal confidence, leader after leader offered fresh business insights from a range of retail categories, telling analysts, in short, that consumers would bend but not break.

The guidance from an industry so closely tied to the heartbeat of the economy, where consumer spending accounts for three-quarters of all activity, provided a much-needed lift to an industry that has been under siege for more than a month, and drifting lower for the past six.

Over and over and over again, the “resilience refrain” was the same, whether it was coming from pet stores, apparel designers, auto parts, cosmetics or dollar stores.

While this emerging industry outlook offered a refreshing narrative change, it is by no means an “all clear” signal that the present mix of macroeconomic challenges is over. If anything, the message was grounded in the fact that unlike the complete shutdown of March 2020 where everything simply halted, the current scenario is far more nuanced. pymnts.com

Retail Father's Day Spending
NRF: Consumers to Spend $20 Billion on Father’s Day Gifts
Consumer spending this Father’s Day is expected to total $20 billion, nearly on par with last year’s record-setting figure of $20.1 billion, according to the annual consumer survey released today by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics. Approximately 76 percent of U.S. adults are expected to celebrate Father’s Day.

“Despite growing concerns about inflation, consumers plan to spend approximately the same amount as last year in celebration of Father’s Day,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said. “Spending patterns also reflect the sentimental nature of the holiday as consumers are prioritizing unique and meaningful gifts.” nrf.com

Tops brings Shop + Scan to more stores
Tops Friendly Markets has expanded Tops Shop + Scan mobile checkout functionality to 24 stores.

Two more Chicago Starbucks join union push

84% of baby-formula shoppers had trouble finding it in the past month