Members of Nevada’s congressional delegation are backing a new push to crack down on coordinated large-scale retail theft as retailers in Las Vegas and across the nation continue to grapple with an issue they contend is only getting worse.
If passed and signed into law, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2023 would allow the Department of Homeland Security to establish an investigative division focused solely on organized retail crime that combines efforts at the federal, state and local levels. It would also make large-scale theft operations a federal crime and allow authorities to seize stolen goods.
Nevada U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen — both Democrats — are co-sponsoring a version of the bill in the upper chamber that was introduced in January by Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley. A companion House bill was introduced in February by Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., and features 60 co-sponsors, including Nevada Democratic U.S. Reps. Dina Titus, Susie Lee and Steven Horsford.
“I want to be very clear that this is not petty shoplifting that we’re talking about — this is basically theft for greed, not theft for need,” said Scott Glenn, vice president of asset protection for Home Depot, the home improvement giant with more than 2,200 stores in North America. On Wednesday, he welcomed Cortez Masto, Titus, Lee and other local officials at the chain’s Summerlin location to showcase new anti-theft measures to deter criminal organizations from stealing goods en masse.
“These are large, multijurisdictional groups that are stealing from us at scale,” Glenn continued. “These individuals are becoming increasingly aggressive, and our associates are threatened every day with knives, guns, mace, bear spray, stun guns, you name it.”
Data from the National Retail Federation shows that large-scale thefts cost businesses approximately $720,000 for every $1 billion in sales — a 50% increase since 2015. Last year alone, organized retail crime cost retailers an estimated $95 billion, which Lee noted was not only bad for the businesses affected but also can lead to higher prices and loss of tax revenue.
“The reason why we’re here is because we need to address what we are seeing in our communities, this organized retail crime,” Cortez Masto said. “It’s one thing for all of our state and local partners and law enforcement to do something, but they need federal support.”
Officials say the trend typically happens in the same fashion: either an individual or a group will enter a retailer and try to make out with as much product in as short a time without getting caught. Then, after taking off with the stolen goods, they will sell the items below market price on online platforms such as Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace or the app OfferUp.
Those funds can then be used to further the retail crime outfit or other illicit activity.
“Organized crime is getting more and more violent,” Lee said. “More importantly, it’s bad for small business: over 56% of small businesses have reported this type of theft. And it’s (also) bad for taxpayers and local governments.”
Crime operations that hit the same store on multiple occasions are especially dangerous, Titus said. If a corporate store is subject to repeated losses, it could decide to close that location, which might ultimately lead to that building sitting vacant and start a downward spiral of blight in the neighborhood.
“Now that leaves an empty building for a long time, it can be the site of a lot of crime or homelessness, and it depresses the neighborhood,” Titus said. “It has real rippling effects from the individual to the store, to the community, to law enforcement generally.”
Titus, whose district encompasses most of the Resort Corridor, witnessed an incident where someone was scooping boxes of fake eyelashes into a backpack at a pharmacy before bolting out of the store. It’s instances like that which can also be dangerous to employees or store patrons, Titus said.
“It’s very stressful to work in a situation where you can’t respond to something that’s going on right in front of you,” Titus said.
In 2021, Nevada lost $85 million in potential tax revenue due to organized retail crime, according the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The national trade organization also reported the total amount of goods stolen in Nevada in 2021 surpassed $466 million, and cost businesses here more than $1 billion between product costs, increased insurance rates, unrealized wages and other factors.
That’s caused Metro Police in recent years to form its own organized retail theft unit, which this year has recovered about $3 million in stolen goods in a little over two months of operating, said Nick Farese, a deputy chief with Metro Police.
Farese added it’s impossible to determine how many stolen goods Metro has the capacity to recover, but it’s likely that the $3 million recovered this year alone pales in comparison to what’s been taken.
Metro’s organized retail crime detail consists of a sergeant, eight detectives and two administrators, and while a good start, isn’t nearly enough to adequately probe each possible instance of organized retail theft across the valley, Farese said.
“Just like everybody, we’ve been impacted with manpower issues and figuring out ways to do more with less,” Farese said. “Just imagine what we could do with more. But we can’t do it alone, we need community partnerships.”
Staffing issues have been similar at the Clark County district attorney’s office. District Attorney Steve Wolfson said his office had two investigators probing alleged retail fraud in a county with a population of nearly 2.3 million people. So a whole-of-government approach such as what has been proposed federally can go a long way in helping efforts locally.
“I’m very pleased that there is this federal effort,” Wolfson said, adding that increased federal resources such as grant funding could also be effective in stemming organized theft.
“As a prosecutor, my role is to punish violators. And you punish people in a variety of ways: You prosecute. You convict. Some people get probation. Some people go to jail. But we need to deter people as well.
“And that’s what we need to emphasize by getting the message out that we’re taking these organized thieves seriously so that hopefully we can deter people from doing this,” Wolfson said.
The bills in Congress also feature provisions that would strengthen existing money laundering statutes to allow prosecutors to better target the illegal proceeds of crime syndicates, according to Titus’ office. It also compels federal agencies to give a report to Congress on federal organized retail crime trends.
Raul Aguilar, deputy assistant director for financial crimes at the Department of Homeland Security, said federal officials have recently renewed a push to educate the public and stakeholders on criminal trends. That includes outreach to online marketplaces to educate them about signs that goods may be sold from users that are a part of organized theft rings.
“It’s crucial in bringing us together to strategize how we can improve our collaborative effort to combating transnational crime and better securing the American people,” Aguilar said. “Organized retail crime and organized theft groups are a substantial and growing threat to the United States.”
Neither iteration of the bill has been assigned to a committee, yet the early bipartisan support has kept Lee and others optimistic about the proposal to become law. But efforts to advance the bill in Washington will be put on hold until lawmakers come to an agreement on budgetary matters, including funding the federal government.
“(So) probably not before the end of this year, because we’ve got a lot going on in terms of funding the government,” Lee said.