C-Stores Remain a Top Retail Crime Target
UK: Convenience store crime jumps again, says ACS report

Crime cost convenience stores £316m in the last year, according to the annual crime report from the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS).

The figure, which means each store is losing more than £6,000 a year to crime, or 10p for every transaction, underlines the shoplifting problem against which retailers are battling. The research confirms retail crime is increasing, with an estimated 6.2 million incidents last year, compared with 5.6 million the year before.

Not all retail crime is shoplifting. One of the big issues is that shoplifting is sometimes accompanied by aggression, with 59,000 incidents of violence in convenience stores last year. This is lower than the previous year, when the ACS recorded 76,000 incidents of violence in shops.

The latest annual report comes as parliament considers the Crime and Policing Bill at second reading stage today (10 March).

The bill aims to introduce a separate offence for assaulting a shopworker, to scrap the de-facto £200 threshold for shop theft offences, and to increase police powers to deal with anti-social behaviour, among other measures to deal with prolific offenders effectively.

The ACS has backed the Crime and Policing Bill as a long-overdue turning point on retail crime, and is urging everyone involved in the justice system, from local forces to police and crime commissioners, to make tackling retail crime a priority this year.  talkingretail.com


New ORC Campaign in Toronto
Toronto police, Crime Stoppers launch new campaign to combat retail theft
Toronto Crime Stoppers and the Toronto Police Service have launched a new campaign dedicated to fighting against organized retail theft, which has surged to a multi-billion-dollar crisis nationwide, police say.

As part of the initiative, Crime Stoppers is offering an enhanced cash reward of up to $500 for tips leading to arrests, an incentive available only until April 6 this year.

The campaign comes as police warn that retail theft has evolved beyond shoplifting into a sophisticated criminal enterprise.

"Since our last retail theft campaign in 2023, the scale of the problem has dramatically escalated, growing from a $5 billion challenge to a staggering $9.1 billion crisis for Canadian retailers annually," said Sean Sportun, Chair of Toronto Crime Stoppers.

Just last year, there have been more than 40 jewelry store robberies reported to police, marking a notable increase from the 21 incidents reported in 2023.

"This is no longer just shoplifting - it is a highly organized operation with offenders specifically targeting retailers and executing sophisticated plans to steal merchandise."

Toronto police say organized retail theft is not only a financial issue but also a public safety concern, with criminals using increasingly brazen tactics. cp24.com

   RELATED: Report Retail Thieves Anonymously


'Retail Crime Is Out Of Control'
Why New Zealand Business Owners Can't Wait For Government Action
Retail crime in New Zealand is not just a problem-it's a crisis. Business owners, whether they run small family stores or large retail chains, are facing a growing wave of crime that shows no signs of slowing down. With $2.6 billion in losses every year (according to NZ police), the damage is not just financial. It's personal.

Shoplifting, break-ins, and ram raids aren't just statistics on a police report. They are moments that shake business owners to their core-years of work undone in minutes, shelves emptied, windows shattered. And yet, while retail crime has surged by 85% since 2019, the response from authorities has been sluggish. The government debates solutions, but business owners are left with the same reality: they must protect themselves, or they risk losing everything.

The good news? There is a solution. Business security systems offer a way to fight back. Professional installers of this commercial security such as Auckland CCTV are your way out of the mess. CCTV, access control, security alarms, and high-resolution surveillance cameras don't just capture crime; they stop it before it happens. For retailers, these systems are no longer an optional expense. They are a necessary investment in survival.

The Cost of Retail Crime: More Than Just Stolen Goods

A business is more than a place of transactions. It's a livelihood, a dream, and years of effort. Yet criminals see it as an easy target. They take what they want, leaving destruction behind. A single theft isn't just about lost stock-it's a financial, emotional, and operational nightmare.

And while criminals walk away, businesses are left to pick up the pieces. What's worse? The more vulnerable a business looks, the more likely it is to be targeted again. Without retail store security, criminals see an easy opportunity-and they return. scoop.co.nz


Cart Scales Being Used to Fight Theft
UK: Tesco trials giant trolley scales in Gateshead
Giant trolley scales are being trialled at a Tesco store in Gateshead sparking a mixed reaction from shoppers. Trolleys are weighed before checkout to identify any items customers who have used Scan as you Shop might have missed or scanned twice.

Tesco Clubcard members already have the option to use Scan as you Shop handsets as they fill their trolleys then check out and pay at the end.

Now in the Gateshead Trinity Square Extra store, shoppers can push their trolley on to the scales and if the weight matches the items they've scanned they pay as normal. If there is a discrepancy a staff member will do a manual rescan of the whole trolley.

Business retail consultant Ged Futter told the BBC this was about loss prevention and staffing costs. He said self-scan had increased the rate of shoplifting but instead of putting staff back on tills, supermarkets were trying to use even more technology to stop thefts.

"This is supermarkets saying, 'we know there are thefts so what we are going to do is treat every customer in exactly the same way to reduce theft'. bbc.com


Will NYPD Detective Exodus Trigger 'Crime Crisis'?
NYC detectives retiring in droves sparks fears of 'chaotic' crime crisis
The number of detectives in the NYPD has dropped below 5,000 for the first time since the pandemic - and union leaders warn that 1,600 more gumshoes could retire by the end of the year, The Post has learned.

There are 4,948 detectives in the NYPD today compared to 7,000 at the staffing peak following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Another 1,676 investigators with at least 19 years or more on the job will be eligible to retire in 2025, union officials said.

The Detectives' Endowment Association said 359 gumshoes have already put in for retirement in the first two months of this year - compared to 453 in all of 2024.

"Fewer detectives means fewer terrorism experts, fewer homicide investigators and more fugitives on the street," Detectives' Endowment Association President Scott Munro said. "More unsolved crimes. More chaos. Period."

As a result of the dwindling numbers, detectives have seen caseloads swell from an average of 250 per year in 2000 to 500-600 cases or more, the union said.  nypost.com


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Retailers Paint a Gloomy Picture for 2025
Faced with economic anxiety, retailers pare expectations for the year

Retailers sent a clear message to investors and analysts this week: Don't expect much growth this year.

Companies such as Target, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Best Buy recently painted a gloomy picture for the upcoming year as consumers contend with stubborn inflation and potential fallout from President Donald Trump's tariffs on imported goods. Other retail chains signaled weak expectations for consumer spending even before trade impacts hit.

Retailers want to proceed with caution as they weigh the volatility that tariffs and other economic challenges could bring, said John Mercer, head of global research at Coresight, a retail data firm. "There's so much unpredictability that I think companies want to play it quite safe" with their financial projections, Mercer said.

Recent consumer sentiment surveys show Americans now feel worse about their finances and inflation than they did shortly after the election. Consumer sentiment had generally been rising since June, according to a closely watched metric from the University of Michigan, but it declined for two straight months at the start of 2025.

Slowdowns in hiring, manufacturing and home purchases have recently raised fears of a weakening U.S. economy. After years of resilience, consumers in 2025 may be stretched too thin to sustain another year of strong spending, said Brandon Svec, head of U.S. retail analytics at CoStar Group, a provider of data and analysis for real estate markets.

That trend is troubling for companies that sell discretionary products such as apparel, home goods and accessories, Mercer said. Those retailers have spent years trying to attract cautious consumers with discounts and deals and now have little room to jump-start weary spenders, especially if inflation continues to tick up, Svec said.  washingtonpost.com


Retail Shed 6,000 Jobs in February
Cracks appear in a retail landscape where hiring has flatlined
The industry shed 6,000 jobs in February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday. The drop was modest, and some of it reflected labor strikes among food and beverage sellers. But the falloff marked a sharp reversal from the month before.

"The declines we've seen in retail postings and jobs added have been slow but present," said Allison Shrivastava, an economist at the job listings site Indeed. "I don't think we will have big swings or drops, but there could be some slow leaks instead."

Retailers made 29,500 net hires as recently as January, most of them in the broad "general merchandise" category, but the longer-running trend has been middling. The BLS said Friday that retail employment levels have been basically flat for the past year, despite seasonal ups and downs. ZipRecruiter chief economist Julia Pollak chalked some of that up to e-commerce and automation, "especially the shift to self-checkout," but acknowledged growing headwinds.

Hiring announcements across the industry fell for three straight years after 2020 before rising again last year, a Retail Dive review of data tracked by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas recently found. But 2024's level was still 40% lower than 2019's.  nbcnews.com


How Will DOGE Disruptions Impact Businesses?
Companies warn investors that DOGE's federal cuts might hurt business

As earnings season begins, filings to the SEC point to uncertainty from the current administration as potential trouble for business.

Elon Musk's sweeping makeover of the federal government in recent weeks is reverberating across the private sector, where companies have started expressing fear and uncertainty about disruptions these changes might inflict on their businesses.

As the year's first earnings season kicks off, dozens of companies in health care, technology, real estate and defense - industries that might have expected rising profits from President Donald Trump's business-friendly campaign posture - are warning investors in their quarterly reports and conference calls that the effects of rapid change in Washington are unpredictable and could hurt their bottom lines.

The uncertainty has spread even to some companies that don't directly rely on government contracts. For example, some drugmakers warned that cuts to the Food and Drug Administration could slow drug approvals. And two real estate businesses with large footprints in Washington, D.C., said that mass firings of federal workers could decrease demand for their properties. washingtonpost.com
 

Has 'Buy Canada' Become a Long-Term Rallying Cry?
A recent survey of Canadians found that even if no tariffs are ultimately levied by the U.S., 43% are still likely to avoid purchasing U.S. products and 40% would avoid U.S.-owned retailers.

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AI Threat Detection to Help Cybersecurity Teams
OpenText Adds AI Threat Detection Module to Platform
OpenText added a threat detection module to its core platform that makes use of artificial intelligence to more accurately surface anomalies.

Currently being made available to a limited number of organizations, the OpenText Core Threat Detection and Response requires organizations to be running the Cloud Editions 25.2 edition of its core information management platform.

Stephan Jou, senior director of security analytics for OpenText Cybersecurity, said initially OpenText Core Threat Detection and Response will target threats in Microsoft environments, including providing integrations with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Entra ID, and Microsoft Security Copilot tools and platforms.

OpenText is also making available a threat integration studio tool that enables OpenText Core Threat Detection and Response to ingest telemetry from other networks, applications, security tools and platforms.

The overall goal is to provide cybersecurity teams with a threat detection platform that leverages machine learning algorithms and generative AI capabilities based on open source Llama models from Meta to continuously monitor IT environments as they change and evolve, said Jou. Those Meta models are being used to, for example, provide summarizations of threats that make it simpler to understand the specific natures of a cybersecurity threat, he added.

It's not clear how widely cybersecurity teams are relying on AI to identify threats, but as the cyberattacks increase in volume and sophistication, it's become apparent that security analysts need more advanced tools. securityboulevard.com


$600K StubHub Hack
Hackers Made $600,000 Selling Stolen Taylor Swift Concert Tickets
A group that hacked into StubHub's computer system and stole more than 900 digital event tickets - most of them to Taylor Swift's wildly successful Eras tour that ended in December - reaped more than $600,000 in profit by reselling them on StubHub.

Two of those involved were arrested and arraigned in New York City, charged with such crimes as grand larceny, computer tampering, and conspiracy, according to the Queens District Attorney's Office. At least one more person is being sought in Jamaica.

The scam involved employees working for a third-party contractor, Sutherland Global Services, in Kingston, Jamaica, who had access to the ticket vendor's computer system. Between June 2022 and July 2023, they used a backdoor to gain entrance in a secure area on the network that was used to give tickets that were already sold a URL and prepare them to be emails to the buyers for download.

One of the defendants, 20-year-old Tyrone Rose, and an unnamed and still-at-large accomplice redirected the URLs to a resident of Queens, New York, Shamara Simmonds, 31, and another person, who has since died. The New York residents downloaded the tickets and sold them on StubHub, pulling in $635,000. securityboulevard.com


 
Partnership Helped Reduce Malicious Activity
Cobalt Strike takedown effort cuts cracked versions by 80%

Fortra, Microsoft and Health-ISAC partnership reduced unauthorized copies of red team tool over the last two years.

Fortra's Cobalt Strike has been a widely used weapon for a variety of cybercriminals and nation-state threat actors, who frequently use cracked copies of the red teaming tool to establish command-and-control communications and persistent access inside victim environments.

Fortra, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) and Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC) formed a partnership two years ago to reduce malicious activity stemming from Cobalt Strike. Those efforts have cut the number of unauthorized copies in the wild by 80%, Fortra said in a blog post Friday.

The partnership is one of many collaborative efforts from the cybersecurity industry and law enforcement agencies in recent years that have focused on curbing abuse of Cobalt Strike, which has been a particularly popular tool for ransomware gangs. cybersecuritydive.com


Indictments of Chinese Cyber Spies Reveal Hacker-For-Hire Operation