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Shoplifting and Organized Retail Crime: Mall Rats

John Talamo of The Limited knows exactly how profitable shoplifting can be. He explains the fight against organized retail crime.

If you think about it, what makes all this worthwhile? Thieves have turned retail theft into a lucrative business. We have intelligence from a crew leader turned informant, and he says that his crew—he had a big crew, and they were good—would target as many as seven malls in a day. They'd steal about $25,000 per mall. So you figure that's $175,000 in a day, and they'd unload it for about 25 percent of ticketed value. So that's $43,750. Not bad for a day's worth of shopping.

What percentage do you think is going through online channels like eBay or Craigslist?

It's escalating.

Does that mean other areas are decreasing?

No. The whole phenomenon is just growing. If you type in Victoria's Secret into eBay, you'll probably get about 22,000 auctions on a daily basis. I'm not saying all that merchandise is stolen, but you know what, if you're selling 30 bras in different sizes at half the price, it's highly suspicious. It's not totally conclusive from a legal perspective. [But] it's like, why would I sell a $100 Express gift card on eBay for $70 [unless it were obtained illegally]? It would be like putting a $100 bill on eBay and taking $70 back. I just added a cybercrimes unit to my ORC team, two people to focus just on e-fencing and Internet crimes. We've had $100,000 cases where people are selling stuff online. These booster crews are stealing the products, they're bringing them to these online fences, and some of them have brick-and-mortar locations too.

Is most of the theft from the stores as opposed to diverting a whole truckload of goods?

Most of it is from the stores, although we do have cargo theft. We have one case that we're working now involving a fence that had 138 cartons of our Bath & Body Works lotions, and that came from cargo.

Do you think these crime rings are connected to an old-style mob, or are they a new thing?

These are more nontraditional organized crime groups. The old organized crime unit had a leader and a hierarchy under him. We don't see that here. These guys are very organized, but they operate more like a terrorist cell. If we apprehend a leader and a crew, it doesn't disrupt the operation of other leaders and their crews.

You've indicated that you're going to be doing more in the way of exercising your rights as victims. How are you changing your strategy?