Retail robbery rings growing more organized and brazen

At first it seemed like an ordinary shoplifting -- someone stuffing a few pairs of jeans into an oversize bag and walking out of the store.

But the thieves got bolder. They began showing up in groups of five or six in the middle of the day, spraying clerks with mace and knocking customers out of the way as they gathered armfuls of clothing.

Sometimes they drive a truck through the front door.

The thieves aren’t looking for just any jeans. They’re snatching high-end designer brands that sell for $150 to $350. The “bluejean bandits” have hit more than two dozen stores in the Atlanta area since January, stealing more than $1 million in goods and selling them everywhere, from online auctions to high school parking lots.

Smash-and-grabs have long been a common tactic among thieves. But in the last five years, authorities say, there has been a proliferation of retail robberies involving rings of thieves who are more aggressive, more specific in what they are looking for and better organized.

According to the FBI, these robbery rings have increasingly used the Internet to fence their goods, making it tougher to catch them.

“They’ve moved from flea markets to the Internet,” said Richard Hollinger, a criminology professor at the University of Florida who compiles the National Retail Security Survey. “They sell a lot of merchandise on the Internet with the price tag still on them. Some might say, ‘If I got a pair of jeans that didn’t fit for a gift, I might sell them on eBay.’ But who would have 50 pairs in different sizes?”

Craig Sherman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation, said selling online can boost the thieves’ profits.

“When a thief sells something on a traditional street corner or pawnshop, he might get 30 cents on the dollar,” Sherman said. “But if he sells it online, he gets as much as 70% on the value.”

In a survey this year by the federation, 85% of retailers said they had been a victim of organized robbery rings. Retailers estimate that they lose more than $30 billion a year to organized retail crime.

EBay says it has 2,000 full-time employees who look for fraudulent and unlawful sales among the 7 million new items listed every day.