What organized retail theft looks like

The term “organized crime” generally evokes the image of a Tony Soprano-like hardo eating deli meats and playing cards while discussing grisly business with their crew. But US retailers fighting organized theft are dealing with an entirely different cast of characters, according to a new investigative report from CNBC.

How these organized theft rings work: The godfather ringleader of one California-based organized theft group that investigators dubbed the “California girls” recruited down-on-their-luck women to shoplift from various stores.

• With travel expenses paid by said ringleader, these suspects committed hundreds of thefts up and down the California coast and into Washington, Utah, Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Ohio – hitting stores like Ulta, Sephora, Bloomingdale’s, Prada, Bath & Body Works, Victoria’s Secret, and Luxottica’s Sunglass Hut and LensCrafters.
• These stolen products were then transported back to the ringleader’s home and listed on Amazon for rock-bottom prices (ex: a brand-new $52 bottle of Estee Lauder foundation was sold for $25 – an offer you can’t refuse, to quote the Don). And the money rolled in. The group sold ~$8 million in cosmetics via Amazon before being shut down, including $1.89 million in 2022 alone.

Other groups are even more sophisticated.“We’re talking about operations that have fleets of trucks, 18-wheelers that have palletized loads of stolen goods, that have cleaning crews that actually clean the goods to make them look brand new,” Adam Parks, an assistant special agent in charge at HSI, which is the main federal agency investigating retail crime, told CNBC.

📸 Big picture: The National Retail Federation estimates that retailers lost $40.5 billion to external theft, including organized retail crime, in 2022. That represented ~36% of total inventory losses – slightly lower than the 37% in 2021.

Read the full CNBC investigative report.