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Pittsburgh, PA – Police are now investigating what appears to be an organized criminal theft ring that is spanning across the east coast. So far police believe that these thieves have hit retail stores in Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland. Last week a group of five men entered a Louis Vuitton store, making off with several high end purses. A few months ago, a group of men believed to be the same people, robbed a Best Buy of some expensive GPS units and high end calculators.

Bob Kressen, a Private Investigator was quoted, “Because they’re going state to state, it’s hard to ID them… Even though they get video on them, which is good to have video on somebody… unless they really band together, and work with the various vendors around the country. It’s gets very hard to ID somebody.”

Bob Kressen continued to state that measures need to be made to catch these criminals and to be made an example of. “You find the people and catch them and set some examples. They’ve got to set examples and prosecute.” Mr. Kressen continues to suggest placing GPS trackers or other traps on products that could be stolen to hopefully catch the bandits.

While I agree with Bob that something needs to be done, I do not think his suggestions would do much good. There has been no set pattern for the type of stores, the specific merchandise or even a general location of where the thieves may hit next. It’s because of this, catching the criminals will be that much more difficult. So until police get a better lead on these criminals, retailers should be careful and make sure all their employee’s are up to date with their companies shrink deterrent policies.