Key Takeaways

  • Home Depot asset protection teams now build 80% of criminal case files internally before handing them to prosecutors to secure warrants.
  • Organized theft rings exploit jurisdictional boundaries by stealing in spots like Cobb County, Georgia, and moving goods into North Carolina and South Carolina.
  • About 35 states run dedicated organized retail crime task forces led by attorneys general from both parties.
  • The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (CORCA) amends USC 18 2314 to establish dedicated federal coordination centers and prosecutors for interstate fencing.

The 80% Rule for External Enforcement

When a criminal ring hits a big box store today, the retailer does not simply call 911 and wait for detectives. Local police departments are stretched thin, understaffed, and buried under violent crime calls. As a result, corporate asset protection teams have quietly turned into private investigative agencies.

Scott Glenn, Vice President of Asset Protection at The Home Depot, describes the reality plainly: “Our job is to do the work for them. Our job is to hand them a case file that is 80% complete, that says I've given you everything that I can possibly do for you to then walk in to a judge, get a search warrant, get an arrest warrant, do everything that I can't do.”

Private teams track booster behavior across dozens of stores, log license plates, map fencing networks, and calculate financial thresholds. They package the evidence into structured legal filings. If a company wants law enforcement to act against bad actors, the company has to do the heavy lifting up front. Handing a prosecutor an unsolved mystery gets filed in the trash. Handing them a binder with verified dates, dollar amounts, suspect identities, and video logs gets an arrest warrant signed.

Why Interstate Crime Defeats County Sheriffs

The central failure in stopping professional theft rings is jurisdiction. A single shoplifter might be a local municipal problem. An organized crime ring is an interstate logistics network. Boosters steal tools in one county, aggregate them in an illicit warehouse across state lines, and liquidate them online to buyers across the country.

Glenn points out how quickly local authority collapses under this model: “This is not a it happens in the county of Cobb here in Georgia, it goes to Cobb and it goes outside the state of Georgia, and it goes into South Carolina, and it goes into North Carolina. That is now a federal crime. And this is interstate trans interstate commerce, this is interstate transportation of good stolen goods.”

A county sheriff in Georgia cannot execute a search warrant in North Carolina. While about 35 states have built organized retail crime task forces led by state attorneys general, rings simply route goods through states with weaker enforcement. To close this gap, retailers are pushing for federal intervention through the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act.

“This is like literally the first Organized Retail Crime Act at the federal level that provides resources, prosecutors, coordination centers, defines, you know, changes to USC 18 2314 that says, 'Here's how you have dedicated federal resources to go after this,' because here's the issue: this is not a local crime,” Glenn notes. The legislation, which passed the House and was attached to the National Defense Authorization Act, aligns statutory tools with the cross-border reality of modern theft.

What to Do With This

Audit your internal fraud, theft, or intellectual property escalation procedures this week. Stop submitting vague support tickets or police complaints with raw logs attached. Build an 80% packet standard: establish suspect identity, create a clean chronological timeline of events, calculate total financial damages, and cite the exact statute violated before asking outside counsel or authorities to intervene.