Companies and Brands

Shoplifters and Dishonest Employees Steal Fewer but More Valuable Things

Colman Andrews

Published: June 10, 2019 9:42 am

Last Updated: January 6, 2020 3:53 am

Shoplifters stole — or attempted to steal — more than $75 million worth of merchandise in 2018, across 13,674 stores across the country representing 20 large retail companies in the department store, mass merchant, and big box categories. Dishonest employees in the same stores attempted to boost more than $38 million worth.

These figures, published in a just-released Annual Retail Theft Survey conducted by Jack L. Hayes International, a loss prevention consulting firm, are based on the value of goods recovered from attempted thievery.

Among those who were apprehended while stealing (apprehensions are different from arrests, because not all of the former lead to the latter) were more than 251,000 shoplifters and more than 28,000 dishonest employees. There were no reported incidences of celebrity shoplifting in this case, like the 2001 Winona Ryder case — a scandal that rocked Hollywood.

Interestingly, the total number of apprehensions in both categories dropped last year by 11.8% overall, though the value of the purloined merchandise rose — by 11.8% for shoplifters and an astonishing 30.1% for dishonest employees.

The consulting firm offered no theories for the drop in apprehensions or the noticeable increase in the dollar value of recovered items.

The Hayes study doesn’t break down the statistics by city, though San Antonio, Texas, was singled out as the state with the most incidences of larceny-theft, the category that includes shoplifting, in a 2018 24/7 Wall St. story on the cities with the most property crimes in every state.