Target's target: Theft as economy sinks and shoplifting rises
Sunday, August 24th 2008, 8:56 PM
Most people picture a typical shoplifter as a nervous teenager stuffing a CD down his pants.
But retail theft, which is rising as the economy tanks, has actually become a high-tech, billion dollar industry run by sophisticated criminal gangs.
Retailers are fighting back - with state-of-the-art techniques.
A story in this week's New Yorker explores the lengths to which Target has gone to battle the bandits - including establishing its own crime lab, staffed with fingerprint techs.
The goal is to help law enforcement track the criminals who steal a whopping $41 billion a year from American stores.
Target's lab at the chain's headquarters in Minneapolis aims to replicate the forensic standards of a government facility so that its evidence will stand up in court.
In one recent case, the magazine recounts, a man was convicted of various felonies after Target techs linked his fingerprints - lifted off items he was seen handling suspiciously in a store - to a stolen "Sopranos" DVD bought on eBay.
At the popular Target in downtown Brooklyn yesterday, shoppers were surprised to hear about the chain's security measures.
"As long as it's behind the scenes and consumers don't know about it, they can really do what they want," said Robert Keeley, 25, who works at a nonprofit.
Thomas Ho, 30, who works at an insurance company, shrugged it off as the cost of doing business in the modern world.
"If they have to raise costs a little for security, I'm okay with that," he said. "As long as I'm still saving money, that's all that counts."
Shoplifting went high tech a dozen years ago, with organized gangs sending "boosters" into stores to steal everyday merchandise. Razors and baby formula are especially popular.
The goods were sent to warehouses, where labels were removed and they were cleaned, repackaged and resold, often to the same stores they were stolen from.
During the last five years or so, stolen goods increasingly have been fenced online, where sellers at sites like eBay are anonymous and are able to turn a far better profit than the traditional route: furtively hawking stolen wares from the trunk of a car parked in a sketchy neighborhood.
Retailers say there are still too many thieves to prosecute. In one year, Target alone busted about 75,000 pilferers in its stores, 25% more than the 60,000 criminal cases in the U.S. in a year.
To combat this technique, retailers want Web sites to crack down, proposing that individuals who sell more than $100,000 a month in merchandise online be required to identify themselves.
