So how did Tilton Police break the alleged multi-state theft ring? Following the initial tip, police interviewed store employees and tracked the accused as they traveled store to store. Police then verified the checks were counterfeit by contacting banks and quickly uncovered the stolen identities being used by the thieves, says Tilton Police Chief Robert Cormier. Within 45 minutes, the thieves spent $3,000 with phony checks at various outlet shops, he says. Police arrested them quickly, before they left the outlet, finding in their car information from allegedly stolen identities, an ID maker, a printer, paper and magnetic ink, used to create checks.
They were making checks on the fly as they went from state to state, Cormier says. They had visited a dozen stores in two days from Kittery, Maine and several cities in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. They kept really accurate records. They had a map and circled every city they hit. They had cities circled in New York and all the New England states.
Organized Theft Rings in NH
Cormier says while the above story is the largest theft case in Tilton Police Department history, it may not be the last as organized theft rings are increasingly common. We have organized groups that come up from New York City, Philadelphia and Boston. They come up in teams and they will divide and conquer to hit outlets and malls, says Det. Sean Ford of the Concord Police Department, who has worked cases involving organized theft rings. He was named the NH Retail Merchants Association's Law Enforcement Partner of the Year for 2009. They will hit multiple stores per day. By the end of day, they will have scammed a few thousand dollars worth of stuff. They're professional shoplifters.
Cormier says theft rings target communities with clusters of retail stores, and in NH that means communities such as Salem, Nashua, Tilton, North Conway, Portsmouth and Newington are. They are looking for a community with the largest number of stores and large sales traffic. They want to blend. They target malls, outlet malls and some of the bigger national retail stores. There's a lot of distractions for the staff, he says.
So how do they do it? After all, department stores have loss prevention officers, cameras, security tags on merchandise and scanners at the doors. The answer is sometimes very low tech. But it's not just big stores that are victimized. Local, high-end stores can make for an easy target, as they may not have the staff and security.
Ford says theft rings use various techniques to make off with the goods. A distraction could involve one person or couple creating a scene. Often one person plays a hapless shopper to distract the staff while their partner absconds with merchandise. Thieves also use lead lined bags to compromise alert systems at exits, Ford says. Others empty a box of its original contents, fill it with smaller, more expensive items, and then pay for only the one item, Ford says.
We have folks that will come in and load up a carriage and simply walk out of the store, says Brian Guay, manager of loss prevention for Hannaford Supermarkets. Others will conceal a product in Hannaford bags or canvas bags, or backpacks or baby strollers. We have people who will exit through a fire door.
To be clear, most are not just stealing an item or two. They steal DVDs, CDs, expensive razors, jewelry and clothes in bulk and then sell them through online auction sites, pawn shops, or even out of the backs of vehicles. Some thieves even use fake receipts to return stolen items to a store in a different location, Ford says.
The National Retail Federation's 2011 Organized Retail Crime survey found 95 percent of retailers reporting they had been a victim of organized retail crime in the past 12 months, up six percent in 2010. I haven't seen it this bad in my 19 years in law enforcement, Ford says. It's definitely on the increase and I don't see it slowing down.
Guay says there seems to be more activity from theft groups coming from Mid-Atlantic States. Companywide, Hannaford catches 4,000 to 5,000 people each year, he says.
The Cost of Theft
Nationwide, there are 1.2 million shoplifting incidents every day at a loss rate of over $18,000 stolen per minute, according to the Retail Merchants Association of NH. If all thefts excluding retail are totaled (bank robbery, auto theft, etc.), they would not total the $26 billion a year of external retail theft. For every dollar recovered, $27.31 is lost to retail theft.
Guay says Hannaford has seen the dollar value of individual thefts jump from $6 a decade ago to upwards of $50 now. Some of that has to do with higher prices, but also with people stealing more. A lot of that is attributed to organized retail crime, he says.
Cheryl Plunkett, owner of Fresh, a fashion boutique in Nashua, says she has seen an increase in theft at her store. As a result, she has moved the most pilfered merchandise to areas of the store where she can better monitor them. Theft comes directly out of my pocket. Being a small business, we're not insured for theft, she says.
Combating Theft
In 2010, a NH law took effect that makes organized retail crime a Class B felony. Since then, Cormier says, the Tilton Police Department had five of those cases in Tilton alone. The Granite State also allows people to be charged with willful concealment and theft by deception, and, NH has enhanced the penalty for using emergency exits in a theft.
Armed with these laws and more cooperation among law enforcement and retailers, thieves are finding it more difficult to get away with the crime. Retailers and police throughout New England share information, identify trends and zero in on theft rings.
If you asked me six seven years ago who my counterpoint was at Wal-Mart or Target or Rite Aid, I wouldn't be able to tell you. That has changed. Retailers get together on a regular basis and hold task force meetings. It's a really good mixture of law enforcement folks and retail loss prevention folks, Guay says. We openly discuss cases we are working on or have worked on and build a vast network of contacts across New England. We've been able to clear a number of cases just by sharing this information. We clear about one or two cases each time we meet.
Retailers use a suite of strategies to fight theft. Some use loss prevention professionals, to examine how people could steal from their stores, and then develop policies and install security technology to prevent losses. Guay says prevention techniques range from closed circuit surveillance (including high resolution cameras that can see into open purses and bags) to electronic surveillance tags on merchandise to plain-clothes detectives.
It's also important to ensure employees are properly trained. We interviewed all of the clerks in all of the stores in the outlets, and all the clerks said the same thing, We had a funny feeling about those guys', Cormier says of the Tanger Outlet case. Despite those suspicions, every clerk rang up the purchases without alerting anyone of the dodgy activity. Cormier says, because of that, Tanger Outlets has now created a phone tree so if a clerk suspects a theft, he or she can alert other stores and the mall's managers would then call police.
Employees can also learn a lot from customer behavior. Nancy Kyle, president and CEO of the Retail Merchants Association of NH, says smaller shops can use customer service skills to deter thieves. When someone walks into the store, say hello, look them in eye, get them talking. Ask if I can help you. Somebody that's going to steal massive amount wants to get in and out and not get noticed, she says.
Current Issue - May 2024