US online retailers urged to crack down on resale of stolen goods

The US department of homeland security estimates the average American family will pay more than $500 each year in additional costs due to organised retail crime (ORC).

Sophisticated criminal organisations steal merchandise from brick-and-mortar retailers, trains, motor carriers, ports and intermodal systems and then resell those stolen goods for profit, often on third-party marketplaces.

Criminals often exploit e-commerce platforms to offload these illicit goods with relative anonymity, creating front companies on online platforms to advertise stolen goods for resale.

In letters sent to Amazon chief executive officer (CEO) Andy Jassy, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and eBay CEO Jamie Iannone, Spanberger pressed the companies to provide an estimate of the average annual sales and profit earned by third parties selling stolen goods on their platforms.

The Congresswoman also urged the CEOs to detail their follow-up enforcement actions and methods to catalogue and retain customer complaint data.

Additionally, Spanberger requested information related to steps these leaders are taking to enhance anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) programmes to report supply chain theft on their platforms.

“Supply chain theft and ORC has detrimental financial impacts for businesses, consumers and our economy, due to increased security expenses, labour costs, repairs/replacements and lost revenue. Lost profit leads to a subsequent reduction in tax revenue. Specifically, ORC costs federal and state governments nearly $15 billion in lost tax revenue, not including lost sales taxes. This ultimately harms the consumer,” said Spanberger in a release.

The Spanberger-led effort is supported by the Virginia Retail Federation, which represents businesses along Virginia’s retail supply chain.

Spanberger also backed the Safeguarding our Supply Chains Act to address rising supply chain fraud and theft.

Specifically, this bipartisan legislation would improve federal coordination to help crack down on supply chain theft by establishing a Supply Chain Crime Coordination Centre within Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) at the US department of homeland security and a Supply Chain and Theft Task Force led by HSI and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)