The Bunker Blog

Police in Mesa, AZ have arrested six people in connection with the theft of over $5,000.00 in merchandise from a local Mervyn’s on Sunday, October 26th. Loss Prevention observed a 16 year old cashier helping the others by charging very little, or nothing at all, each time the group would come to her register with merchandise. Two more subjects are being sought in connection with the thefts.

According to reports, three adults and three juveniles have been charged in the case so far.

This is the classic pass-off, under-ring scenario.  The cashier’s friends come to his/her register with hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise. The cashier then proceeds to “pretend” to scan and ring all items, but in actuality, is only scanning one or two low priced items. The items are then bagged, the receipt given to the “customer“, and hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise walk out the door, unpaid for.

Of course, there are ways to identify this type of theft. Between tools and training, loss prevention agents are usually pretty good at catching on to this scheme pretty quickly. This was a big win for the LP team at Mervyn’s.  I won’t be surprised if we hear later that there is even more to this story.

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A lot of retailers send out, via email or other media, what we call BOLO (Be On the Look Out) reports to other stores within their market. Some even share these with other retailers within the same market. This is a great resource for retailers to get ahead of professional thieves who travel to multiple locations within a market, or even from market to market, stealing or defrauding retailers as they go.

On October 24th, a jury in Greenville, SC awarded Rita Cantrell of Greer, SC $3 Million for defamation resulting from a BOLO sent out by a Target asset protection agent to area retailers. According to the news story reported by Fox, Cantrell, who works in loss prevention for Belk, went into a Target and did some shopping. When she checked out, she attempted to pay with a $100 bill. Target personnel suspected that the bill may be counterfeit, so they refused to accept it.

That’s when the BOLO was sent. Later, Cantrell was visited at her work by Secret Service investigators, who inspected the bill and declared it to be a real $100 bill. They also showed her the BOLO. I would assume that she was pretty upset. She was accused of counterfeiting, visited by law enforcement while on the job as a loss prevention agent, and her picture was spread throughout the area, to various retailers, with a report attached to it that claimed that she had attempted to pass counterfeit money.

Cantrell sued Target and won. The jury decided that she should get $100,000.00 for actual damages, and $3,000,000.00 in punative damages. Target has stated that they will appeal.

Here are my questions to you, my readers:

1. If you are in LP, does your company use this type of system to communicate with other stores/retailers?
2. If so, is it effective in deterring theft? How do you measure the effectiveness?
3. What guidelines do you think should be used? (ie. What constitutes a BOLO versus a simple report?)
4. Do you think the jury’s ruling was right? Too much? Too little?

Please comment on this post to let me know your thoughts.

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I had the privilege of being interviewed by Barry McDonnell at LP Community today. Very exciting for me. We talked about a whole range of topics, including Loss Prevention involved in ORC, Gang Shoplifters, and Parents Shoplifting with Kids. Head on over to LP Community and give a listen.

Special thanks to Barry and the folks at LP Community for the opportunity.

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Loss Prevention Professionals are invited to submit contributing articles to The Bunker Blog. If you are interested in writing LP related articles, please contact me by clicking on the “Contact Me” button at the top of The Bunker Blog, or just comment to this post.

If your work is selected, you will be given full credit for the article, and we will provide a link to your website, if you have one.  Here are the guidelines:

• All articles must be related to the loss prevention industry. They may be news articles, advice, opinion, product reviews, or educational in nature. NO blatant advertising, but you may plug your own site/service/product in your article one time.
• All articles must be original. You may reference news stories, etc. but must not plagiarize. That’s illegal. Also, if you refer to anyone else’s work in your article, please be sure to give them credit. Some sites require that you do so in a specific way, so be sure you contact the site’s administrator and get the proper permission to use their materials.
• Articles must not contain profanity or other generally unacceptable terms. Please double check spelling and grammar, too.
• Articles may be edited by me, but will only occur in cases where corrections are necessary. In such a case, I will email the author a draft of the edited article for their approval before posting.
• Articles are non-paid articles. As this blog is not a business, I do not pay for articles. This is strictly voluntary on the part of the author. Authors may choose to maintain copyright on any articles submitted/published here, but must give me permission to post, in writing, in such cases.
• No Spam-like articles will be posted here. Articles with links to any undesirable content will not be published. Please limit links to relevant content.

That’s basically it. I do reserve the right to change these guidelines, should the need arise. I do not guarantee that I will publish every article submitted. I will, however, do my best to review every submission in a timely fashion, and provide feedback to submitting authors as quickly as possible as to whether or not their article will be posted, and if so, when.

Are you in the LP industry and have some interesting material to share? Do you need an outlet for your great content? Do you need some visibility to your site/service/product? If so, here’s your chance. Send me an email so we can discuss your article today.

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Surjit Mundi and Swarnjit Kaur Mundi got caught shoplifting from their local Kohl’s. As they exited the store, they were approached and apprehended by the store’s loss prevention. Then, the store discovered their eight year old son wandering around inside the store. Apparently, they FORGOT him!!

The rest of this article is pure opinion, so hang on. These two knuckle heads got so wrapped up in their little shoplifting excursion that they actually forgot about their son being in the store with them? Are you kidding me?  This series of articles on shoplifting with kids is really concerning. More and more, I am reading and hearing about parents or other adults either using kids to steal, taking kids and subjecting them to unnecessary danger while they steal, or worse still; leaving their kids behind while they make their escape.

These people are so concerned with getting away with theft that they will use their kids, abuse their kids, or abandon their kids, just to satisfy their own greed. Can you imagine the life these kids endure? To me, this is the ultimate dysfunctional family. Any parent who would use or abandon their child just to save their own skin from a shoplifting charge is a low life, plain and simple.

Does anyone want to comment on this article? If so, please leave me a comment.

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