I Jason Brewer
n the LP Magazine January 2022 ORC BLITZ virtual event, three executives from the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) explained how their organization is working with their retail members to push for federal and state legislation that would increase penalties for organized retail crime (ORC) as well as force online marketplaces to be more transparent with who is selling goods on their platforms. Following are excerpts from their presentation.
Jason Brewer Senior EVP, Communications and Marketing
Michael Hanson
Theft is something that’s not new to retail, but about a year before the pandemic, many retailers saw an uptick in ORC, and it was having an impact not only on their bottom lines, but on their employees. They were starting to see increasing violence in stores, and the brazenness with which thieves were coming into stores was getting out of hand. This started us thinking about how to tackle this challenge. In our conversations with RILA’s asset protection community and other
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stakeholders, we identified three areas that contributed to the situation: ● First, felony thresholds at the state level had been raised in several places. This resulted in retail theft crimes not treated as seriously as in the past. ● Second, in many cases, police were no longer responding in many jurisdictions to what they perceived as simple petty theft. ● Third, the rise in online marketplaces as a place to very quickly, and anonymously, fence large quantities of stolen goods. The selling of stolen goods on online marketplaces was one area that our members have seen a huge uptick over the last several years, and during the pandemic, the problem got exponentially worse. They consistently see product of theirs that they suspect has been stolen from their stores showing up on these platforms. That is the main problem that we have sought to address through a coalition of different business groups and companies. Together we created the Buy Safe America coalition to shine a spotlight on the problem and to
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Leading the Push for ORC Legislation help policymakers understand what was happening. We are trying to address it from multiple angles. We want to work with law enforcement on smarter laws at the state and local level. We want better collaboration at the state and local level both with retailers, the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies. But the big thing we’re focusing on is the need for more transparency online. It’s way too easy to hide behind a screen name and fence stolen product. That’s something that we think Congress needs to address.
Michael Hanson Senior EVP, Public Affairs As we had conversations with members of Congress about stopping ORC, they really focused in on creating more transparency and accountability on third-party marketplaces, which eventually led to the introduction of the INFORM Consumers Act. The bill does a couple of things. It requires online marketplaces to verify certain third-party sellers by confirming certain business information, such as tax identification number, bank account information, name, email, address, and
