How The Shadowy World Of Organized Retail Crime Works

CNBC goes inside the shadowy world of organized retail crime, revealing how a crime ring stole millions of dollars of beauty items that ended up for sale on Amazon, according to authorities. For months, we got exclusive access to major investigations by the California Highway Patrol, making arrests and serving search warrants. Ulta Beauty CEO Dave Kimbell, in a first in-depth interview by a corporate leader about organized retail crime, says more needs to be done by the online marketplaces to curb the sale of stolen items.

Correspondent: Courtney Reagan
Senior Investigative Producer: Scott Zamost
Editor: David Lettieri
Senior Animator: Michael Schwartz
Photographers: Duane Poquis Jacob Jimenez, Dave Dellaria, Oscar Molina, Roger Prehoda, Gary Levens, Gary Wahlgreen, Duane Oldham, Ray Rodriguez, William Pupa, Steve Washington, Mark Aster, Leroy Jackson
Audio: Guadalupe Mejia, Mark Edelstein, Everett Wong, Lori Smith, Erik Anschicks, Warren Wolfe, Chris Hall
Intern: Ali McCadden

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How The Shadowy World Of Organized Retail Crime Works

[boostedmaniac]

In addition to stolen items on Amazon, there’s tons of counterfeit items on there too.

[richiemochi]

They need to solve the problems like letting people walk out of a store cart full of items. People who work $13/HR in a store are breaking their backs breaking down 10 - 12 pallets per day and separating items so it go onto sales floor and these criminals are coming into the store getting bags and cartful items walking out with the merchandise worth $950 + in half an hour. Who gets the better bargain?!

[j.trulyrandom]

Amazon could definitely do more but how about arresting those who steal it in the first place?

[mgzouzp]

Working in retail for years. It is cheaper for the corporations to allow someone to shoplift. The cost of a lawsuits if a Employee or Thief gets hurt or killed out ways the cost of the stolen item. Most retailers do not allow you to try and stop or chase after a shoplifter. The only thing that they can do is call the cops after. Also, stolen items become a tax write off for them.

[JoelsterGk]

I used to work at Sunglass hut and people would just go and grab dozens of sunglasses and run away, they knew to go for the expensive models so we had to move them constantly, and nobody could do anything, not even security was allowed to touch the thieves and they know that, that's why they don't care.

[ohmyrufiohhh]

Imagine stealing from TJ maxx. A store that’s actually much more affordable and benefits the lower class…

[Donde_Lieta]

I used to work at Sephora (pre-Covid), I remember this kind of thing happening in 2016. On my first day out on the floor, someone started piling up Urban Decay Pallets in their arms— my co-worker saw what was happening, so we went up to “offer assistance”, and they just dropped everything all over the floor, and ran…
I always figured they were doing some scam like this—

[xelefonte]

Running a multi-million dollar shoplifting operation so that you can buy an unnecessary mansion…that’s the peak of American greed.

[djp]

This is why everything is locked up at Walmart

[egr]

Why can’t thieves put this energy into something honest? Terrible.

[KimberlyLetsGo]

Having worked as an internal auditor for a retail company, a lot of product walks out the 'back door' aka, internal theft. My town's Walmart had over a $1 million loss due to internal theft. While consumer theft has risen greatly, this video doesn't even talk about how retail product is being stolen by the workers and sold by fencers.

[laurasplicer]

Why do they always overlook fact that DA let these people go

[itziaf]

I work for a luxury store in south Florida and our store stays getting hit .. they come and take whole stacks of jeans leave the tables empty. They steal fragrances and is getting more and more frequent each pair of jeans or fragrance is at least 300-500 is really scary to the employees because we don’t know how far they can go to steal.. is really gotten out of hand

[ChristineY-wr]

I’m from Japan but live in the USA for 20+ years. Ppl get legit arrested for stealing $10 in Japan, and I don’t understand how these thefts are kind of tolerated here. We need to hold these people accountable. It’s not fair to people like us who work hard.

[seanburton]

As a former reseller, Amazon has the capability of stopping those kinds of stores.

Amazon stops the sale.

Asks for a sales receipt before the item can be placed back in the sales loop.

No receipt, no resale.

[chasefasten]

I work for a major retailer. We get hit several times a week by several theft rings. They steal $2000 each trip with two perpetrators. Sometimes they will hit multiple times in the same day. They steal "Nike" and "Adidas".

[zooyzeh]

Why are they blaming online market places when they don’t do anything to stop this in the stores. They’re locking up their merchandise but not the criminals.

[NaniVitali]

A lot of these stores are kicking and screaming about theft yet when you go into a lot of their stores there’s rarely ever a LP officer or even any employees around; even when there are employees they’re not allowed to engage with the thieves due to fear of lawsuit or fear of the thieves having a gun.

[Kysen]

Pleads not guilty, caught at home with the goods lol.

[colbymoore]

Yep... I worked at J. Crew a good while back. Saw a lady walk in and start grabbing everything she could. My manager yelled at me to stop as I started chasing her (aka you'll get fired if you go after her). Sucks, because I could have laid a solid form tackle on the sidewalk all day.