Stores are buying stolen goods from professional shoplifters who steal to order for criminal gangs, retail groups have found.
The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) said its members are reporting “high volume” and “very brazen and direct” incidents of shoplifting typically targeting meat, cheese and alcohol.
The businesses have reported seeing the stolen goods up for sale locally or on Facebook and WhatsApp groups, The Guardian reported.
ACS chief executive James Lowman said he was aware that some, usually smaller stores, were buying stolen goods.
He said thieves were stealing to order, suggesting that buyers may be turning a blind eye because they could not be sure if the items were stolen.
Lowman added: “What we are seeing is a higher volume of theft from the same people who are professional shop thieves, often doing it to feed addiction problems.
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“And how do they do that? Well, they resell the products. And so we think there probably is a stronger market for those resold products.
“And that is something that we have been observing and talking about for the last couple of years.”
The ACS said its members had reported 5.6m incidents of shoplifting over the past year, with half of the shoplifters repeat offenders.
They have also spent £339m on crime prevention, such as CCTV, alarms and tagging.
A British Retail Consortium (BRC) spokesperson said stolen goods were ending up in “unscrupulous” restaurants, on market stalls and online marketplaces.
There has been a rise in recent years of thieves turning up at numerous different stores of the same company in a day, they said.
The spokesperson continued: “It’s tough for retailers because they do report these crimes and there are processes they go through.
“But the police response is so low at the moment that unfortunately these crimes aren’t treated with enough seriousness at the moment.
“These gangs realise they can get away with it.”
Earlier this week, home secretary Yvette Cooper pledged to “end the shameful neglect” of shoplifting by the police as punishments have plummeted in recent years.
Official figures from the Home Office, Ministry of Justice, and police forces found that just 431 shoplifters received fixed penalty notices — the lightest punishment for stealing items worth less than £100, in the year to March 2024, marking a 98% drop from 19,419 issued a decade ago.
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