New York’s shoplifting epidemic is now so extreme {that a} shadow “resale financial system” has fashioned throughout on-line marketplaces.
Based on a report from The New York Publish, among the metropolis’s most infamous thieves are hawking merchandise at a reduction costs on companies resembling Fb and eBay. Organized gangs are even offering their underlings “buying lists” of the precise objects they need stolen.
In some circumstances, thieves even stealing perishable objects resembling costly ice cream earlier than promoting them on for revenue to individuals at subway stations or native bodegas.
One regulation enforcement supply advised the Publish:
They get buying lists for objects that embrace cellphones, energy instruments, purses… They carry stolen items to [illicit] wholesalers within the 5 boroughs.
Members of the booster crew get their money. Then the vendor, if you’ll, distributes them via his personal community, through storefronts, if he has them, or he places them on-line and sells to customers via Fb Market.
Final month, New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul touted her efforts to try to crack down on the difficulty, which is costing native companies a staggering $4.4 billion yearly.
Amongst her proposals included the creation of a state police workforce to prosecute organized theft rings and larger surveillance programs for the resale of stolen items.
“What we’re targeted on is what has turn into a classy organized retail operation, the smash-and-grab efforts,” she stated on the time. “They go in and swipe all the pieces off the cabinets.”
Shoplifting throughout New York Metropolis has skyrocketed lately, rising 64 % between June 2019 and June 2023, in accordance to the Council on Felony Justice. That is above even the 61 % soar seen in Los Angeles, the place shoplifting is successfully decriminliazed.
