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The Washington Post December 24, 2006 | Ernesto Londono – Washington Post Staff Writer Detective David Hill strolled into the Gucci boutique in Chevy Chase on a recent afternoon as the whirlwind of last-minute Christmas shopping swirled around him.

“You’re dressed down today,” teased Jess Brown, a 23-year-old store clerk.

“I’m going to a dress-down kind of place later,” the Montgomery County retail crimes detective shot back with a smile. He was wearing khaki cargo pants, a gray turtleneck, a Victorinox Swiss Army jacket and Jordan sneakers — a break from his usual attire: suits. Sharp suits, at that. “I might have to run, tackle.” And so began the shift of the only detective in the Washington region assigned exclusively to investigate retail theft and fraud – - which law enforcement officials and retail advocates say have become increasingly sophisticated and organized in recent years, especially during the holiday season.

The schemes run the gamut from snatch-and-run simplicity to stunningly complex operations. The tricks and schemes seem to change as quickly as fashions, experts said.

As he made the rounds at Westfield Shoppingtown Montgomery Mall, the detective, 43, popped into a store to get a new cartridge for his Mont Blanc pen.

“Put it on my tab,” he told the salesman.

The detective later dropped by a Victoria Secret store to buy a gift certificate. After paying, he asked for a bigger bag because, seriously, who wants to walk around the mall with a wallet-size pink bag from a lingerie store?

Upstairs, he stopped by a popular clothing store to check in with a clerk.

“Our dynamic duo been around?” he asked.

“Not that I know of,” the clerk replied.

According to Hill, the pair is part of a growing trend in retail crime — probably part of a band hired by bulk buyers of stolen merchandise. The booty winds up on racks at underground bodegas and flea markets in the New York area.

Such bands typically work in teams of five or six, stake out targets carefully and steal discreetly, taking advantage of packed stores.

“Whatever is new, that’s what people want,” Hill said. “It’s all about the money.” In police vernacular, these groups are known as “boosters.” Many walk into stores with “booster bags,” rigged with duct tape or aluminum foil that prevents many sensors from setting off alarms at store entrances. Then there’s also the “booster skirt,” which is loose and has large pockets inside in which to stuff merchandise. It comes in all shapes and sizes, as do the thieves. here victorinox swiss army

They have lookouts, people assigned to distract clerks in other parts of the store. They use cellphones and hand signals.

“It’s always the greedy ones who get caught,” Hill said.

But not all thieves leave the store without paying for merchandise. A growing scheme involves replacing the price tag of a costly item with a tag for a substantially cheaper one. If clerks aren’t paying attention — and with long lines at the store, many aren’t — someone can walk into a store and purchase, say, a global positioning system worth hundreds of dollars for $35. That scheme worked handsomely for a Montgomery college student until he got busted last Christmas Eve, Hill said. The student, an immigrant from Iran, is fighting not to wind up in deportation proceedings as a result of his criminal case.

Another popular scheme involves forging receipts. For example, a thief will buy three pairs of jeans at a department store, then use a personal computer and the right paper and software to make copies of the receipt. With a phony receipt in hand, the thief returns to the store, grabs three pairs of jeans off the shelf and then “returns” them for a refund.

U.S. retailers reported losing more than $37 billion last year to retail theft and fraud, up from $31 billion the year before, according to a survey commissioned by the National Retail Federation. This holiday season retailers expect to lose $3.5 billion to retail fraud, according to the organization.

“These groups have gotten increasingly sophisticated,” said Joseph La Rocca, vice president of loss prevention at the federation. “Most people think of shoplifting as one person going into a store and stealing a shirt. What we’re seeing nationwide is an increase in organized retail crime.” Most retailers begin their security shopping for the Christmas season in the summer, updating software and investing in new technology in anticipation of schemes such as receipt forging and gift card fraud. Many have created sophisticated loss prevention units that work much like little police departments and include plainclothes investigators who amble around stores posing as shoppers.

“We play a cat-and-mouse game, always trying to stay a step ahead,” said Richard Soloway, founder and chairman of NAPCO, a company that provides theft-prevention consulting and software to some of the nation’s top retailers. “There are always very clever people trying to beat the system.” Montgomery’s retail crimes unit — a one-man band — was created in 2002 after Hill, who has been on the force since 1991, put together a proposal. go to site victorinox swiss army

“A lot of the shoplifters we deal with are career criminals,” he said. He and others in law enforcement say the criminal justice system treats shoplifters with relative leniency because most cases involve offenders who aren’t violent, and stolen merchandise is generally insured.

Hill, whose day job has turned him into an avid shopper and bargain-spotting whiz, can’t help but take it personally.

“They feel it’s a victimless crime,” he said of thieves. “But it affects us as a society because it increases prices.” When the thieves do get caught, the cases are pretty airtight, the detective said. Since he’s been investigating retail crimes, none of his cases has gone to trial because every defendant has pleaded guilty, Hill said.

His cases generally start with a tip from a store employee. Dozens of salesclerks have him on speed dial.

“There’s nobody like him in his dedication to the retail industry and his success in forging relationships in the retail sector,” La Rocca said of Hill. “He’s always blasting out information, coordinating meetings, getting people working together.” The highest-profile case Hill has investigated led to the arrest of Claude A. Allen, who resigned as President Bush’s top domestic policy adviser in February after a series of fraudulent refund transactions at a Target in Gaithersburg were detected by loss prevention specialists.

Allen was charged Jan. 2 with felony theft scheme and pleaded guilty in August to a misdemeanor theft charge.

Other national trends that Hill is keeping an eye out for include shoplifting teams made up of gang members — which have cropped up in large cities in the Southwest recently — and “E-fencing,” or selling stolen merchandise online.

“I think I could do this for the rest of my career,” he said.

Ernesto Londono – Washington Post Staff Writer