The Junkie Drug Addict Shoplifter
The junkie drug addict shoplifter steals to support his drug habit. Junkies often work in pairs and sometimes in groups of three or four. A known shoplifting offender will appear in a store hoping to draw attention to himself, while his partner, who is probably not known to the police or store personnel, will actually make the lift. Once back on the street, they split the take after selling the items.
The shoplifting drug addict is very particular about what he or she steals. He knows that it is to his benefit to take items that have a very high resale value on the street. Each addict usually has his own specialty. In this way he becomes known to fences as the person to contact when a certain type of item is desired. Shirts and bras especially, but almost any article of clothing, are favorite items with junkies.
A very real and dangerous situation exists whenever a shoplifting junkie enters a store to steal. He may be so desperate for his next fix, and the need may make him so oblivious, that he may act rashly and with total disregard for other people's safety. The existence of the junkie shoplifter is one reason why all store personnel are warned to be extremely cautious in stopping shoplifters. If the shoplifter shows any sign of panic or of harming anybody, retail security people usually will be very happy with identifying the person and letting the police do the rest.
The Shoplifter Who Doesn't Shoplift
There he is, walking down the aisle. He's in the perfect location: A crowded large retail store in a crowded urban city. There he goes, turning down the aisle where all the electronic accessories are sold. He looks at a pair of small headphones that can easily be attached to a portable CD player. He looks at them, looks around, brazenly puts them underneath his jacket, and zips it up. He doesn't seem to care if somebody sees him as he walks down the aisle and turns the corner and heads right for the door! But just before he gets to the door, he takes the headphones from underneath his jacket and throws them under one of those large Rubbermaid recyclable trash cans on the bottom shelf of the rack. Why did he do this? Because he thought at the last minute he'd get caught? No, on the contrary, he wants to get caught and he wants to be accused of shoplifting, even though he has nothing in his hands. Why? Lawsuit.
If he convinces the store owner that he was falsely detained, and the police officer who responds that he is being falsely accused, he could get a couple of thousand dollars minimum for his "pain and suffering" and humiliation from being branded a shoplifter in front of all those people.
This type of shoplifter is on the rise because with lawsuits it is more advantageous for the shoplifter to pretend to take an item than to actually take it. These shoplifters are very well rehearsed. They case the store, just like any other professional, decide which item they want to pretend to shoplift, and focus on that item when they enter the store. But they also plan what is known as the ditch-off point, the point in the store where they are going to get rid of the item right before they get caught by the security personnel or an
employee. This type of shoplifter waits longer for the payoff, but it's worth it!
Catching the Shoplifter
One of the common misconceptions is that a shoplifter has to actually leave the store before he can be apprehended by the police or security personnel. Many times the shoplifter feels that once he is past the doorway and out on the street, he has a chance of outrunning anybody who might choose to pursue him.
The laws vary in different states, but in many places security personnel may legally stop a shoplifting suspect once he leaves what is known as the paying area. The law provides that a retail store or its employees has the right to detain a suspected shoplifter. Detaining a person in a reasonable manner for a reasonable length of time is not an arrest and the shop will not be liable to the person detained. However, the store must notify the local police department as soon as possible.
In many states it is considered a theft to conceal goods on one's person while still inside the store. The shoplifter does not have to walk past the cash register to be eligible for apprehension in this scenario. In some states it may also be a crime to carry an item from one department to another within the same store, such as picking up an item in men's apparel and carrying it down to the lower level of the store where electronics are sold.
To apprehend the shoplifter successfully, the accuser, whether a security person or an employee of the store, has to prove one of the following elements:
1. He must prove that the theft was intentional. Sometimes intent can be extremely difficult to prove. Take the case of a woman shopper who slipped two scouring pads into her purse instead of her shopping cart. When the woman was prosecuted for shoplifting, her explanation was that she did not want the scouring pads to come in contact with the food in her cart, so she placed
them in her purse as a safety precaution. When she came to the checkout, she forgot to pay for them and left with them in her purse. In this particular incident, the court gave her the benefit of the doubt and dismissed the charges.
To prove intent, security people will allow the person to leave the store before they actually confront them. If the person passed the cash register without paying for his merchandise, it is usually quite easy to prove that the theft was intentional.
2. The shoplifter must actually have the article in his or her possession. Sometimes the shoplifter thinks that by dropping the item or throwing it away after he has been detected he can get out of the situation. But that is not the case if the store owner can prove that the person had possession.
3. The merchandise in question must be proved to be the property of the store and must be offered for sale. Through price tag codes and perhaps inventory sheets, the store owner can usually prove that the particular merchandise actually came from his store. But these things are not always as they seem.
Let's take this scenario: A store security person observes an elderly woman look over a display of men's clothing. After a short while she rolls up a pair of men's trousers and hides them underneath her coat. Walking behind the display she then moves the trousers from under her coat to her shopping bag. She leaves the store. The security person, thinking that he as a clear-cut shoplifting case finds that no crime has been committed. Why? The lady could not speak or read any English as she was from Czechoslovakia. The woman wanted to buy her husband a pair of pants, just like the ones he likes so much, so she took his favorite pants to the store and compared them to make sure that she bought him the right thing. As she cannot speak or read English, she was too embarrassed to ask for help. Of course, cases like this are unique, but you
can see how it behooves merchants (and their shoppers) to be able to easily identify their merchandise.
4. It must be proved that the shoplifter intended to use the stolen merchandise or to deprive the rightful owner of its use. Again, this is usually not to hard to prove, because if a person leaves the store or paying area with the merchandise he has hidden and avoided paying for, then of course he is depriving the rightful owner of its use. Store owners are getting pretty tough about shoplifting and the law is on their side.
White Collar Crime is a catch-all phrase encompassing a variety of frauds, schemes and other nonviolent offenses. With more personal and professional business now being conducted electronically, it is easier for crooks to thrive at our expense. Home and car alarms are no longer adequate to protect us from becoming victims; these days we need security for our computers and credit cards as well.
Computers play as basic a roll in crime as they do in business and science. Computers are targets of thieves and as instruments of swindlers and intruders. Hackers pride themselves on gaining unauthorized access to data files. Money launderers cover the trails of dirty money, and common thieves can steal millions without leaving their desks. Their plundering can leave a crime scene empty of conventional clues. Only recently have states begun to pass laws that deal with computer crimes.
The annual loss from computer crime each year in the United States
has been estimated as high as $100 billion. The average loss per incident can be as high as $600,000 compared to the average loss of $19,000 from all other kinds of thefts combined. The experts agree that computers will be the single greatest crime generator that we face in the future.
Telephones and Computers
Crimes involving the telecommunications industry have grown, especially since the break-up of the AT&T system. The Communications Fraud Control Association (CFCA) has estimated that phone companies lose as much as $500 million each year. The most common crime is the theft of long-distance access codes.
Fraudulent Telemarketing
Fraudulent telemarketing costs the industry about $200 million a year. You receive a card in the mail that says you won a prize and you need to call a particular number to claim it. These prizes can range anywhere from a new car to a "diamond" pendant. You call the company to redeem your prize, and they ask for your credit card number. You tell them that you want to know what prize you have won. They tell you that before they can tell you what prize you won, they need your credit card number to verify who you are. That's a fallacy in a couple of ways: (1) your credit card number isn't going to tell them who you are, only the banks have that information and banks do not reveal this information; and (2) most reputable companies do not do business this way. Now, there is a giant legitimate telemarketing industry out there. The problem occurs when you make the call or when you receive an unsolicited telephone call trying to get you to buy anything from land to travel packages, vitamins and water purification systems.
Travel. The travel industry, by and large, is legitimate and well run, but there are problems with postcards that say "you have won three days, four nights in Cancun or Florida or New Orleans, call this number." What they are trying to sell you is a $300 travel club membership. What they don't tell you is that you probably have to pay for plane fare to take a travel package to an exotic locale in the off-season. Or, they overbooked the hotel so the room will not be as nice as they described to you. They are going to sell you a lot less than what you think you are buying.
Scams seem to go in a cycle. As law enforcement tries to put these telemarketers out of business, they reappear through a method called laundering. The telemarketers go out to a small family business in a rural area that has come across hard times. They approach the owners with a way of bringing money into the business every week. All they want to do, they say, is use the business' merchant number to process credit card charges, and the telemarketers will give them a percentage. This seems like an easy way to make a couple thousand dollars a week, but when the people who purchased these items start calling and complaining about the product they received, the complaints fall back onto the small business owner. Their business will fail, and the bank will ultimately take the loss. We are starting to see more and more of this operation in Florida, Texas, California and the Midwest.
Computer Crimes
Individuals possessing modified personal ethics have long been at work devising methods to use the computer to satisfy greed. Money, physical assets, information, plans and virtually every other aspect of business entrusted to a computer have been stolen or otherwise criminally violated.
Losses can occur through criminal acts, malfunctions and natural disasters. Fraud, espionage and sabotage can be instigated by people, who may be employers, employees, suppliers, customers or other outsiders. Their intent may be personal gain or harm to the company. They may be interested in obtaining assets or information to establish or improve a competitive business. Finally, they may attempt to blackmail management with threats to perform criminal acts unless they are paid off.
What are the objects of computer crime? What attracts the criminal? Deliberate crimes against a company are always perpetrated for one or a combination of these three reasons: financial gain, competitive advantage or harm to the company.
Financial Fraud. Financial gains through fraud are perpetrated far more often than the other two. Many embezzlers have the attitude that "the company can afford it" or "the company will never miss it." The targets are money or property such as the computer itself or the company's products, services, information, marketing strategy or personnel records. Products and services are fenced for money, while information, marketing strategy or personnel records are sold to competitors or used for blackmail.
Payroll. Most sizable companies generate paychecks with the computer. Generally the information necessary to compute a payroll is stored in permanent computer files. This exposes the company in three ways: (1) Money can be stolen by manipulating the payroll; (2) These files can be sabotaged and are extremely costly to reconstruct; (3) Payroll information may be stolen and used to the detriment of the company.
Generally, tampering with payroll files can be made to appear accidental. If the criminal is discovered, he will plead accidental error and merely return the funds. Properly executed, the risk of prosecution in this type of theft is minimal.
In one case of payroll manipulation, a company submitted their payroll to a data processing center with a separate payroll report for each employee. The criminal simply inserted extra payroll reports into the system and removed them after the checks had been processed. Payroll checks were mailed to the nonexistent employees at a post office box from which the thief later retrieved them.
Accounts Receivable. The accounts receivable file can very well be the lifeblood of a company. It provides a reasonably complete listing of the company's customers, particularly the biggest ones, who would certainly be of interest to competitors. But most importantly, in many companies, the only records of money owed lies in the receivable file. If this file suddenly disappeared, could it be regenerated? Would the company be able to establish who owed what? If bills could not be sent out for a month or two and much of the monies owed were suddenly removed from the cash flow pipeline, could the company survive? A loss such as this could be fatal because the company is thrown on the mercy of its customers. Some pay, some don't. Bankruptcy is often the result.
Industrial Espionage. Computer crimes used to gain a competitive advantage are known as industrial espionage. Here the gain is the growth or increased profits of the competing company. Espionage is the practice of spying to obtain data or other information to gain unfair or dishonest advantages.
Operations Information. The marketing and sales files stored in a computer usually contain customer lists and sales records as well as compensation information for sales personnel. They could provide customer information and also reveal the salesmen who are most effective and the nature of their compensation plan. All this information will be of great interest to competitors.
Management information stored in a computer can also reveal many aspects of long-range operational planning. There is increased use of gaming techniques to predict the effectiveness of long-range options. The results of these studies often include a detailed performance analysis of various departments or divisions of the company. Such planning and gaming could be invaluable information to a competitor or supplier.
Sabotage. This is deliberate interference with the company's operation. Individuals perpetrating such crimes are usually looking for personal satisfaction such as settling a grudge rather than financial gain. Unions or activist groups may use sabotage to intimidate or blackmail management. Other activist groups may simply desire to draw public attention to a company whose activities are considered objectionable, unethical or illegal by these activists. An example of the groups might be anti-abortionists, environmentalists or animal rights activists.
Besides being susceptible to exploitation for financial gain, a data processing system is also susceptible to malicious damage, manipulation or destruction. The criminal may be an individual who feels he has not been given a fair deal by a company or it may be a striking labor union embroiled in negotiations with management. The intent here is to disrupt the company operations or blackmail the company by threatening such destruction.
At one time, Dow Chemical
Company was a target of action groups opposing the Vietnam War. Its computer center was invaded and seriously damaged. The attackers had been thoroughly briefed; they understood the major points of vulnerability, and proceeded to effectively attack them. The cost to Dow was estimated at more than $1 million.
Banks and Financial Institutions. A small miscalculation of interest or service charges is generally not noticed by the customer. Multiplied by a large number of accounts, this small miscalculation can provide the criminal with a handsome annual bonus. From the institution's standpoint this type of embezzlement seldom raises suspicion until enough customers object. And, who really understands how that stuff is calculated? Most of us take it for granted that the interest on our bank statement is correct.
Borrowing funds, stocks or other assets is another form of fraud. For example: An accountant works for a firm handling a large corporation's account. He comes in over the weekend and transfers $30 to $40 million of a company's assets to his own personal account for a period of two days and then transfers them back on Sunday night, so it will not show up on Monday's posting. That employee can earn, over the course of a weekend, several hundred thousand dollars in interest.
We are aware of an individual who attempted this on one occasion, and as fate would have it, Murphy's Law ruled. While driving to the office late Sunday night to re-deposit the money back into the company's account, he was injured in a major accident and was hospitalized for three weeks. Needless to say when he left the hospital he went straight to the unemployment line!
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