NEW YORK — The surveillance video, from earlier this year, is startling: Four masked men march in a line through a Home Depot store in New York -- two of them looking like menacing bodyguards -- while the two others confidently push carts stacked with almost a hundred boxes of high-value items that they take but never pay for.
When the same crew, allegedly doing the same thing, was approached by a security officer at another Home Depot store nearby, one of the men threatened the guard.As Home Depot executives describe it, that New York-area crew is part of a growing threat to Americans across the country: so-called organized retail crime, where groups of criminals steal prized items to sell online or elsewhere.
They target stores big and small, and they take whatever they know they can sell -- from power tools and spools of wire worth $3,000, to designer clothes and even medical supplies, officials told ABC News.Glenn said The Home Depot investigated about 400 cases of suspected organized retail theft in the past year alone -- more than one per day -- and that the numbers are"growing double digits year over year.
But there are also much broader -- and potentially more concerning -- implications, according to retailers and law enforcement officials. At a Home Depot in Pleasanton, California, in April, Blake Mohs, a 26-year-old employee set to be married in August, was fatally shot after he tried to stop a suspected thief. Two people have been arrested on murder charges in the case.
Some media reports and others have questioned whether law enforcement officials and retailers have been exaggerating the scope of organized retail theft and the threat it poses to the U.S. homeland. As far back as 2021, thereported that although retail and law enforcement sources cite"eye-popping figures," there is"reason to doubt the problem is anywhere near as large or widespread as they say.
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