Summary
Organized retail crime (ORC) is a low-risk, high-reward business line for transnational criminal organizations’ portfolios that presents a significant financial and public safety risk. While retailers and law enforcement partner to investigate ORC cases and provide education on the misconceptions and misunderstandings, it is clear there is a missing link in these partnerships, and that link is financial institutions.
In this guide on organized retail crime prevention, produced in partnership with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), we define ORC and its evolving threat landscape, introduce the illicit financial flows tied to ORC and larger organized theft groups (OTGs), and examine case studies, red flags, and typologies. The paper also includes retail loss prevention strategies, guidance and reasonable steps to enhance your anti-financial crime (AFC) program, including your investigation effectiveness, suspicious activity reporting (SAR), and how to identify which information is highly useful to law enforcement.
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Key Themes
Reading this guide on organized retail crime will help law enforcement and anti-financial crime professionals to understand how to stop organized retail crime by defining:
- What is organized retail crime
- How to identify organized retail crime
- Organized retail crime methods
- The hierarchy and characteristics of organized theft groups
- How ORC intersects with financial institutions
- ORC red flags and typologies
- ORC and OTG case studies
- Suspicious activity reporting considerations
- AML program considerations and enhancements
