A Saks finance manager, 51-year-old Ava John and her 32-year-old niece were "arrested and charged with stealing at least $680,000 from the company in a false invoicing scheme." The best part about these stories is typically what the thieves blew their money on. Anyway, this reminds me of a recent New Yorker article by John Colapinto that looks at the history and current high-tech strategies (Target has an actual crime laboratory inside their office headquarters) of retail loss prevention or the prevention of "shrink," that is "the erosion of profits--some forty billion dollars in 2006...resulting from shoplifting, employee theft, and organized retail crime (professional thieves who steal goods in large volume for resale)." Interestingly Colapinto states that "the biggest theft problem faced by retailers is internal."
Shoplifting accounts for almost thirty-two percent of shrink; employee, or internal, theft accounts for almost forty-seven per cent.
And these two movies below are my two all time fave con movies, and they are classier than a tuxedo t-shirt, too. If you're gonna steal, do it with class and style:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCfflhAHbT0]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LWG-ul0rJE]