Retail IT News

Organized crime rings are increasingly targeting retailers for a quick payday.  Overall retail theft is down, but the threat from one quarter is worse than ever. The National Retail Federation’s latest Organized Retail Crime Survey found that 96% — a new record — had been victim of organized crime in the past year. Just under 88% said they are seeing organized crime more often over the past three years.  Not only are incidents of crime up, they’re becoming increasingly violent. In the survey, retailers said about 15% of apprehensions of organized crime thieves ended with some amount of violence (only 13% said so last year).  How they’re stealing  Retailers reported the most common type of theft from organized crime rings was cargo theft — 52% said they’d experienced it in the past year, up from 49% in 2011. More than two-thirds said they’d had theft occur between the distribution center and the store; just under 46% were robbed between the manufacturer and the distribution center; just under 16% had thefts occur at the distribution center.  But organized crime rings aren’t limiting themselves to old-fashioned cargo raids. They’re keeping up with the latest in technology: Retailers also reported increases in digital receipt fraud.  The good news: More retailers (40%) report law enforcement agencies are aware of the problem and understand how serious and complex it is.

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