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:
- If you are in LP, does your company use this type of system to communicate with other stores/retailers?
- If so, is it effective in deterring theft? How do you measure the effectiveness?
- What guidelines do you think should be used? (ie. What constitutes a BOLO versus a simple report?)
- 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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