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CVS is battling a $45 billion crime spreePublished: Sept. 2, 2021 at 5:04 p.m. ET
By
Rebecca Ballhaus Shalini Ramachandran ndran
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Retailers are spending millions to combat organized rings that steal from their stores in bulk and peddle goods online, often on Amazon
Retailers are spending millions a year to battle organized crime rings that steal from their stores in bulk and then peddle the goods online, often on Amazon.com Inc.’s retail platform, according to retail investigators, law-enforcement officers and court documents. MADDIE MEYER/GETTY IMAGES
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Ben Dugan sat in an unmarked sedan in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood one day last September waiting for the CVS to be robbed.
He tracked a man entering the store and watched as the thief stuffed more than $1,000 of allergy medicine into a trash bag, walked out and did the same at two other nearby stores, before loading them into a waiting van, Mr. Dugan recalled.
The target was no ordinary shoplifter. He was part of a network of organized professionals, known as boosters, whom CVS had been monitoring for weeks. The company believed the group responsible for stealing almost $50 million in products over five years from dozens of stores in Northern California. The job for Mr. Dugan, CVS Health Corp.’s CVS, +0.20% top investigator, was to stop them.
Retailers are spending millions a year to battle organized crime rings that steal from their stores in bulk and then peddle the goods online, often on Amazon.com Inc.’s AMZN, -0.42% retail platform, according to retail investigators, law-enforcement officers and court documents. It is a menace that has been supercharged by the pandemic and the rapid growth of online commerce that has accompanied it.
An expanded version of this article appears on WSJ.com. |
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