LOS ANGELES — The California Department of Justice announced a partnership with major retailers and resellers Tuesday to combat organized retail crime. CVS, The Home Depot, Walgreens, Amazon, Target, Meta, eBay and OfferUp are among the companies Attorney General Rob Bonta is collaborating with in a first-of-its-kind agreement to deter large-scale theft and fraud rings.
The retailers and online resellers say they will work together to increase the detection and reporting of organized retail crime and improve collaboration on information sharing to speed up investigations and prosecutions of largescale retail theft. Their efforts will target thefts at different stages of the supply chain, from cargo to retail to resale in various online marketplaces.
“This is not about one-off thefts from stores. It’s not about the occasional smash and grab at your local big box store,” Bonta said Tuesday at a Los Angeles event announcing the agreement. “This is about multi-billion-dollar criminal schemes that are complex, orchestrated and incredibly organized. The only way we can take these criminals down is by beating them at their own game — by being organized as well.”
The attorney general’s office defines organized retail crime as criminal rings that steal property with the intent to sell, distribute or return stolen merchandise for value. Oftentimes it’s the coordinated theft of a specific item from a specific retailer that can be conducted in mere minutes and yield hundreds of thousands of dollars.
U.S. retailers lose about $700,000 to organized retail crime for every $1 billion they do in sales, according to the attorney general’s office.
Earlier this year, Bonta announced that eight people had been arrested and charged with felonies for their involvement in a statewide organized retail crime ring targeting Apple Stores. Bonta’s office also charged three people who were targeting The Home Depot locations in the state, and four individuals who had stolen more than $1 million in computer gaming equipment from cargo trucks.
“I’ve seen organized crime take many forms, but a few things are consistent,” said Rory Stallard, who works with The Home Depot’s Assets Protection Investigations. “One is that these rings of criminals go beyond petty shoplifting. They are professional thieves running a business, stealing from retailers and our communities.”
It is increasingly easy for those thieves to then resell stolen merchandise to unsuspecting consumers through e-commerce and third-party sites.
“This is happening right here in Los Angeles,” Stallard said. “Just a few months ago, our Home Depot organized retail crime investigators in the Southern California market identified products being sold through online platforms that match products suspects were stealing from our local Home Depot stores.”
The Home Depot ultimately caught the thieves after working with the California Highway Patrol Organized Retail Crime Task Force to present evidence. Agreements like the one the company signed with the attorney general Tuesday “are necessary to dedicate resources to this growing problem and bring coordination to all of our efforts.”
Last year, California passed two laws designed to curb retail crime that the new attorney general agreement builds upon. Senate Bill 301 requires marketplaces to collect and store information related to third party high-volume sellers. It also requires online marketplaces to suspect future sales activities of such high-volume third-party sellers who are not in compliance with California’s reporting requirements.
Assembly Bill 1700 created an online reporting tool managed by the attorney general’s office for the public to be able to report organized retail theft. That reporting tool officially launched Tuesday for people to submit complaints and tips.
