Network of synchronised gangs, employees looting supermarkets

As Chief Justice Willy Mutunga reviews the case of a man recently jailed for two years for stealing body lotion worth Sh780, retail chains have raised an alarm over the rise organised pilferage rings that are causing them to bleed millions of shillings through shrinkages.

So bad is the situation that Tuskys, the country’s second largest retail chain are in the process of introducing facial recognition technology that it says will detect the faces of shoppers entering its stores and sound an alarm if a shoplifter caught on camera in a different store enters another one.

The emerging organised network of criminals is said to be targeting high-value products such as electronics, furniture, baby food products, cosmetics and general food items despite the introduction of Radio Frequency (RF) tags to detect unpaid for items when someone walks out.

An RF tag is a disposable electronic circuit attached to a product that emits a frequency which triggers an alarm when a customer walks out with an unpaid for item.

It is part of the expensive hardware that supermarkets are installing in order to minimise theft but criminals are also getting cleverer.

Also referred to as victimless robbery, the crimes as the Sunday Nation discovered range from the theft of a few items by shoppers to organised criminal gangs sometimes working in cahoots with store employees to steal high worth goods for resale that have turned shoplifting into a thriving black market  industry.

SYNCHRONISED GANGS

The shoplifters who work in gangs operate in a synchronised manner with some distracting the employees as others remove the RF tags and stuff them under their clothes.

According to retailers, there are more women shoplifters than men because they are allowed to walk in with their hand bags into the supermarkets plus the nature of their clothing allows them to easily hide stolen items.

“The spate and frequency of shoplifting incidents, level of planning among other indicators, leads us to conclude that shoplifting is no longer sporadic. The actors in most cases have a common thread and almost always target specific products,” says Thiagarajan Ramamurthy, Regional Operations and Strategy Director at Nakumatt.

A number of the serial shoplifters appeared in several photos taken by security officers from various supermarkets seen by the Sunday Nation.

“With organised crime, strategic planning by these gangs is a key factor. They’re constantly devising ways to overcome existing loss prevention systems and we also cannot rule out internal collaboration,” he said.

“A majority of the offenders still have ongoing cases but are still daring enough to engage in the same crime, while out on bond,” he says.

According to Nakumatt, the most common items targeted by shoplifters include disinfectants such as the large dettol, insect killer spray cans, Kiwi shoe polish, Nivea products, hair extensions, Bio Oil, Luminarc dinnerware, infant formula, electronic accessories, and wines and spirits.

James Owiri, whose case the CJ is currently reviewing had been caught stealing two bottles of Nivea body lotion at an Uchumi Supermarket. While sentencing Milimani Chief Magistrate Daniel Ogembo denied him the option of a fine as he had previously been caught stealing goods worth Sh4,000.

In October last year four suspects, two women and two men who were arrested at Naivas Supermarket’s Naivasha store were later found out to have been captured stealing on five different occasions by the store’s CCTV.

SH100 MILLION

Both Nakumatt and Tuskys say they lost over Sh100 million each in last year and accuse small rogue retailers for providing a ready market for the stolen goods hence fuelling the vice.

“There has to be a buyer for whatever is stolen so it is not about poverty. This is a business and the law is too lenient about it,” chief operating officer at Tuskys Peter Leparachao says.

“We will be taking pictures of anyone that we get shoplifting in any of our stores and saving it in the system. The next time they walk in, an alarm will go off immediately,” he says.

According to him, a single shoplifter can walk away with goods worth Sh20,000 and a gang of five can walk away with goods worth more than Sh100,000 in a single mission.

In November, the retailer fired 91 employees at its Beba Beba branch and another 16 at its Embakasi branch on suspicion of colluding with a shoplifting ring to steal.

Kenya’s formal retail trade market is estimated to be worth over Sh300 billion and is one of the five main drivers of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The sector’s lobby group, Retail Trade Association of Kenya (Retrak), however, says stores are not motivated to pursue theft cases because of the expenses incurred which in most cases exceed the cost of the stolen items.

“In as much as the shoplifter will be spotted, pursuing them is another hurdle,” the group’s CEO Wambui Mbarire says.

“The major challenge is that we have a legal system that is not punitive enough to deter the vice, either as perpetrated by shoppers or unscrupulous employees,” she says.