Authorities found evidence that bands of shoplifters — called “boosters” — stole everything from mascara to plasma televisions from local retailers for resale at area flea markets, pawn shops and on the Internet.
Police said they executed 16 search warrants and seized 24 vehicles and approximately $300,000 in stolen merchandise, including about $250,000 from vendors at the Caesar Creek Flea Market in Wilmington. Stolen items ranged from toiletries such as shampoo, body spray, detergent and cologne to high-end electronics, DVDs, computer games and vacuum cleaners.
Walmart stores in Middletown and Franklin were favored targets, but police said the shoplifting operation spanned four counties and 13 cities, townships and villages. Of those arrested during the operation, 32 suspects were from Middletown; six from Franklin; six from Cincinnati; three from Dayton; two from Trenton; two from South Lebanon; one each from Germantown, Springboro, Lebanon, Monroe and West Carrollton; and one from Virginia, arrest reports show. Organized retail theft is common, police and retail experts said, and tough to stop even though retailers spend some $12 billion a year combating it.
According to the National Retail Federation, organized retail crime is estimated to cost retailers across the country $30 billion a year. Eight in 10 retailers say organized retail crime has increased over the last three years, according to the federation’s 2013 survey.
It’s also costly to consumers because it results in unavailability of products that consumers want and may well result in a price increase when the retailer is able to get the items back in stock, federation officials say. Officials say there may also be a public health risk in buying things, such as personal hygiene products, that have been stolen and resold.
In the Dayton metro area, larceny-related crimes, which include shoplifting, decreased 1 percent from 4,700 in 2011 to 4,649 in 2012, according to Federal Bureau of Investigations’ Uniform Crime Report.
“We have partnership with businesses and loss prevention managers that are in Dayton, said Lt. Wendy Stiver, a spokeswoman for the Dayton Police Department. “We pay attention to trends and incidents that might affect those businesses, but we don’t have a lot of large scale operations like the ones that were targeted in the (Middletown) investigation.”
In Middletown, police Officer Tom Lawson, one of five officers from the department who worked with the task force, said he thought he had seen everything in his 23-year career, but this operation opened his eyes “to a different breed of thieves.”
“These people are not your average shoplifter, or even a poor mother with children who is trying to feed her kids because her junkie husband spent all the money,” Lawson said. “This is all they do.”
In fact, nearly 60 percent of those arrested could be described as making a living or supplementing their income by stealing or fencing stolen items, said Middletown police Sgt. Steve Ream, who supervised the task force.
Since 2002, the number of theft offenses in Middletown has remained steady between 2,500 and 3,000, according to the city’s records department. There were 2,792 theft offenses last year, and in the first six months of this year, there have been 1,420, according to police records.
Rise in heroin use spurs task force
A five-person task force was launched this spring after Middletown police noticed a trend in thefts from retail stores in the city’s east end. Police believed the thefts were connected to the rise in drug addictions in the city, particularly heroin use.
Most, about 90 percent, of those arrested for theft during the operation were addicted to heroin, Lawson said.
“Everything they do every day is based on heroin,” he said.
Lawson said he spoke with a female suspect who said she funded her addiction through the thefts and couldn’t remember the last time she wasn’t high on heroin. She stole enough merchandise every day — $200 worth — to feed her addiction, Lawson said.
“That was her life,” he said. “Get up, steal, get high, go to bed, repeat.”
Before they ever set foot in a store, the thieves have a buyer lined up who will give them, for example, $100 for $10,000 worth of assorted cosmetics, police said. The thieves would then go to various retail stores with “shopping lists” from the fences who would sell — at a slightly marked up price — the stolen items at flea markets, pawn shops or online.
The theft rings would include teams of three, four, six or eight people, and some teams even had names such as “The Dayton Gang” or “The Pawn Shop Gang,” police said. The teams would surround an area of the store, such as the electronics department, and several team members would distract the cashier, while one of two others would be responsible for stealing items, police said.
The thieves would sometimes conceal items in an empty purse or shopping bag, then walk out of the store and into a waiting getaway car. Police said some of the criminals were so brazen that they sometimes ran out of a store with a shopping cart loaded with merchandise.
One couple was caught stealing $10,000 worth of merchandise from Toys-R-Us at the Dayton Mall in Miami Twp., authorities said. Another man was indicted for stealing $1,600 worth of Blu-ray movies from Walmart. He allegedly hid the movies in his wheelchair, though he had no disabilities, according to police.
The thieves would also sometimes bring back stolen merchandise with no receipt and get a gift card in exchange, police said. The suspects would turn around and sell the gift cards to a fence for up to 50 percent of its value or trade it for drugs, police said.
“Everybody is looking for a deal,” Lawson said.
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