National chain stores employ their own investigators who build criminal cases against shoplifting rings. But legal experts say concerns abound.
ATLANTA — Robert Whitley smiled wide as he showed off the mountains of merchandise inside his sprawling warehouse. There were stacks of paper towels that rose to the ceiling. Enough Huggies diapers to supply a day care. And large vats of blue and green laundry detergent of mysterious provenance.
Videos of “smash-and-grab” store robberies have gone viral in recent months, and rampant thievery has caused stores to shut down. At the same time, police departments have scaled back property crime enforcement due to soaring rates of violent crime and criminal justice reforms that have increased the threshold for charging shoplifters with felonies.
“They can operate without the constraints that limit what police can do,” said Jeffrey Fagan, a Columbia Law School professor and policing expert. “They can pretty much do whatever they want.”The story of how Whitley landed in the FBI’s crosshairs begins about eight years ago. “Is it a guy stealing $100 a day?” said Dugan, who oversaw the probe. “Or is this a real professional shoplifting crew?”
Investigators also tailed suspected shoplifters tied to Whitley driving as far as Florida and South Carolina to see what or if they would steal, Dugan said. CVS successfully pitched the case to the FBI, and soon federal agents picked up where the retail investigators had left off. According to court documents, in 2017 they set up a “pole cam” in front of Whitley’s warehouse for an added set of eyes.
“We are doing this because we are the victim, and we are trying to solve this problem,” Mike Combs, director of asset protection for Home Depot, said of the role corporate investigators play. “I don’t think there’s enough officers to handle every retailer’s case. You’ve got to help them out.” When police detectives in Ohio found the cellphone number of a man selling stolen tools on Facebook Marketplace in 2019, a detective called Lowe’s. The home repair chain found his phone number in a registry that collects personal information when customers make returns without receipts, said the Perrysburg Township Police Department. That led officers to get a warrant to raid the man’s home, where they found more stolen items.
The lengths retail investigators go in building cases against shoplifting rings — following people across state lines, for instance — also raise questions, policing experts said. Law enforcement documents show that workers didn’t report the thefts to police. Instead, in-house investigators got to work. They ran plate numbers of getaway cars caught on store security cameras, and cross-referenced drivers’ names in databases that identify people who had made returns without receipts. They questioned men caught stealing tools and asked for the names of their accomplices.
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