Shoplifters in NY creating resale economy with stolen goods on eBay, Facebook Marketplace: report

While ill-gotten merchandise is typically sold online via sites such as eBay and Facebook Marketplace, some criminals have engineered sophisticated schemes involving cross-border "returns" and other shady practices.

According to the New York Post, the process begins with those who do the shoplifting. Once the goods have been acquired, a middleman buys them for a fraction of the sticker price and sells them on eBay and Facebook Marketplace. Everybody gets paid, and the cycle continues.

In some cases, higher-ups even go so far as to give their thieves "shopping lists" detailing exactly what they'd like them to steal.

An April 2023 report conducted by the National Retail Federation in coordination with a private security company K2 found that in New York, 26 percent of listings on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for items listed as "new with tag" as well as Tide Pods, diapers, makeup, and baby formula were suspected to be linked to organized crime.

The report cited a number of indicators that pointed towards organized crime, including warehouse-style setups with more products in stock than would typically be needed for personal use, and pricing that was well below retail.

As the Post reports, thieves have even gotten into the food business, stealing perishable items from ice cream to steak to resell them for profit to people at subway stations or local bodegas.

In some cases, however, a stolen item is not sold, but rather, brought back to shops with generous return policies. To avoid being caught, criminals often travel out of state and use fake driver's licenses, cycling through identities as authorities and stores catch on.

According to New York Governor Kathy Hochul, the value of goods stolen from shops in the state in 2022 was around $4.4 billion. The Big Apple was the hardest hit, with 63,000 incidents reported to police that year.