Pinching thieves | Retailers keep pace with increasingly sophisticated heists and push a new law to thwart theft
Photo/Amber Waterman
Curtis Picard, head of the Maine Merchants Association, says an engaged sales staff is key to preventing theft
One afternoon last summer, Joe Simpson began watching his security screens more closely after Kittery Trading Post’s surveillance cameras picked up a white van in the parking lot. The van’s door slid open and several people carrying empty bags clambered out and then dispersed, headed for different stores, including his.
“We saw it on the camera so we could see it coming,” Simpson says, and he quickly spread the word to his sales clerks on the floor as well as to other stores in the shopping center. He had already set up a call system to alert nearby shops when potential trouble was headed their way.
The van with out-of-state license plates and the group of “shoppers” was all that Simpson, the trading post’s director of loss prevention, needed to see to realize an expert heist could be imminent if he didn’t take immediate precautions. Organized retail crime, or ORC as it’s often called, is a step above ordinary shoplifting, which often arises from an opportunistic impulse. ORC, however, requires forethought, careful planning, often a network of like-minded criminals and has the potential to deliver big losses to stores and big bounties to thieves. And storekeepers in Maine say this problem is on the rise.
“Theft is growing … Lately we catch people in the act weekly,” Simpson says. “We’re starting to see more professional thieves coming into Maine.”
Nationally, retail stores are losing $15 billion to $30 billion a year to professional thieves, according to the National Retail Federation, with FBI estimates as high as $30 billion to $37 billion. Total retail theft across the country climbed from $31.3 billion in 2001 to $41.5 billion in 2006, according to the Maine Merchants Association, which also reports that Maine lost $146 million to retail theft in 2007, the most recent data it has available.
The problem in Maine is not due necessarily to the economy, although demand for bargain items goes up in bad times. More people are perusing flea markets and online sites like eBay to find cheap goods, which sometimes are stolen. At the same time, many shopkeepers have had to trim staff and cut back on security measures, says Curtis Picard, Maine Merchants Association’s executive director. During the holidays, stores need to be extra vigilant because busy associates might be less likely to notice something awry, and stores often hire seasonal employees who aren’t as experienced at spotting questionable behavior.
Ironically, Maine’s shoplifting law contributes to the problem, Picard says. In Maine, it is a felony crime to shoplift more than $1,000 worth of goods, while neighboring states such as Massachusetts and New Hampshire have much lower limits — $250 and $500 respectively — for felony theft. That helps lure out-of-state miscreants to Maine, argues Picard, who notes organized criminals are aware of Maine’s statute and are mindful to keep their loot under $1,000 so if caught, they are only slapped with a misdemeanor charge.
Picard and an organized retail crime task force in Maine have been meeting for the past year to work on the issue and drafted new legislation for lawmakers to consider that would lower the state’s felony limit to $500. New legislation is also possible at the federal level. A bill passed by the House in October calls for $5 million for a new specialized unit in the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute organized retail theft and to give more aid to local law enforcement agencies to do the same.
Beyond making the legal terrain more perilous for thieves, there are many other ways storekeepers can out-smart the tricksters, from greeting every customer at the door with a cheerful, “Hello! Let me know if I can help you!” to setting up expensive high-tech camera systems. One of the more effective actions Maine retailers have taken in the last two years has been to strengthen communication and collaboration with local police departments.
Retail crimefighter
Every week, Wendy Kierstead, a retired Portland police officer and current crime analyst based in the Lisbon Police Department, compiles photographs for her statewide bulletin on retail crime. In these grainy, dark pictures, unsmiling people are caught on camera walking into stores, sometimes wearing baggy sweatshirts and hats pulled down tightly over their heads. They are mostly grim-faced and tense looking.
Since January 2009, Kierstead has regularly sent out her FORCE bulletins (Fighting Organized Retail Crime Every day) to 320 shopkeepers and employees around the state. The newsletter warns of recent criminal sightings and store robberies, and contains pictures of both suspicious people and vehicles.
Roland Godbout, a police detective in Lewiston who helped launch FORCE, says the bulletin has improved retailer-police relations and made it easier to catch thieves. “If Marden’s has someone who’s shoplifted, we put it in the bulletin, and then Sears will call and say, ‘We have him.’”
While there is good collaboration between police and stores, it is a relationship “that needs constant care,” Picard writes in an e-mail. “Retail staffers change as do law enforcement. Good retailers know when and when not to call police so as to not waste their time, and conversely some police departments treat these cases more seriously than others.”
Regional meetings with store owners, store associates, loss-prevention experts and police are held regularly around the state, as well. Among other topics, they discuss the latest schemes and scams they’ve encountered.
Organized retail criminals defy stereotypes: They are men and women, young and old. Some shoplifters are linked to vast criminal enterprises, according to Joseph LaRocca, senior asset protection adviser for the National Retail Federation, while others might be a husband-wife team making $100,000 a year by stealing.
“They could be drug-cartel operators, or major violent criminal gang operators who shift their focus to retail crime, because it is nonviolent and the charges that typically come with theft are far less than carrying cocaine,” LaRocca says. “They funnel the proceeds of theft up the chain,” using street thugs to do the dirty work.
The most basic tactic for shoplifting is pinching an item from a rack and slouching off with it, but professional gangs sometimes split up the duties or use special equipment to abet their mission. A whole lexicon is now attached to this activity. Decoys distract sales associates while a booster puts items into a booster bag, a specially lined shopping bag that can foil exit alarms. Another gang member might stand on the look-out, hold up merchandise to conceal the crime, or take the blame for any alarm that does go off. Meanwhile, a mule sometimes enters the store at the last minute to walk out with the merchandise for a fence operator to sell to a pawn shop, or to e-fence online.
Picard says sophisticated criminals can also swap products’ bar codes, for instance putting a $3 sticker from a cheaper item on a $30 higher-end version. Some are buying bar-code machines that can mimic an item’s tag. They’ll photograph price tags while they’re in the store with their phones, and then go home to create a faux version they can stick over the original that alters the price. Or they’ll make fake store receipts — with help from websites that offer services for such schemes — so they can return stolen items for cash. Others will buy a $10 gift card and patiently punch in 1,000 variations of that card’s number into a store’s online checkout until they hit on another valid card, Simpson at the Kittery Trading Post explains. “They’re not geniuses,” he says. “But they’re also not stupid. The wiser ones will never have to enter the store.”
Cynthia Lear, head of security at Renys, says her salesclerks are watchful for certain behavior, even for something as mundane as chatting on a phone. “What we find with cell phones is they get on their cell phones with another person in the store and communicate back and forth,” she explains.
Engaging tactics
Walt Huffman, Marden’s loss-prevention manager, says his company catches about 1,000 shoplifters a year, and roughly 10% to 15% are of the ORC variety. The ones they don’t catch take off with between 2% and 3% of what would have been the store’s gross revenues, he says. The problem has grown in the last 17 years, says Huffman, and the company has correspondingly stepped up its surveillance tactics. At the moment, its 14 stores have a total of 12 loss-prevention specialists, as well as camera systems throughout. One camera system can cost between $15,000 and $20,000, Huffman says, and can be remotely operated to track someone throughout the store, zooming in close enough to read a cash register’s numbers.
Kittery Trading Post has set up 100 cameras, Simpson says, and trained employees to act like customers and look for empty backpacks or booster bags. The store loses only 0.5% of its potential sales, Simpson says, less than the 1.6% national average.
Retailers can take simple steps to protect themselves. They should always put desirable goods near the cash registers, and keep the store neat. LaRocca says a messy store makes stealing easier, since missing items are less apparent. The time a thief takes to neaten a stack of clothing from which he’s just stolen something is an opportunity for clerks to catch him. “Any time you’re able to delay a theft, it increases the chance of someone getting caught,” LaRocca advises.
Stores should mimic what their neighbors do so they don’t become an easy target, he says. If your neighbors have gates, put up gates; if your neighbors use cameras or security guards, do the same. “Every geographic market dictates something special,” he says. “Even national chains make decisions about camera positions, how many cameras to use and other strategies [based] on their unique environment.”
Again and again, experts say the most effective way for stores to minimize losses is to have friendly sales people. “The best way to prevent this theft is good customer service — engage customers, make eye contact, be helpful,” Picard says. “Normally the folks that are coming into the store don’t want to engage with employees, they want to steal, and by making eye contact with them you’re more likely to remember them.”
Rebecca Goldfine, Mainebiz staff writer, can be reached at rgoldfine@mainebiz.biz.
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