85% of Retailers Have Been Hit by Organized Crime in the Past Year

With growing numbers of retailers falling prey to organized crime rings, the businesses are fighting back by increasing detection and dismantling these groups, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.

On Wednesday, the NRF released its 2008 Organized Retail Crime report, finding that 68 percent of retailers nationwide reported having identified or recovered stolen merchandise and/or gift cards from a fence location. That's up from 61 percent in 2007.

Movement of stolen merchandise is increasingly occurring online, being sold through third-party auction sites, according to the NRF report, making it easier for crime rings to maintain anonymity. It also found that 85 percent of retailers said they had been victimized by organized crime over the past year, which is up from 79 percent in 2007.

"Law enforcement and retailers alike are fed up with organized retail crime rings and are stepping up efforts to stop them in their tracks," Joseph LaRocca, NRF vice president of loss prevention, said in a statement. "The brazen and unethical behavior of organized retail crime suspects results in possible health risks for consumers, adds unnecessary fees to consumers' purchases and funds criminal enterprises, including the mob and terrorist organizations around the world."

LaRocca said organized retail crime continues to proliferate as retailers that have not been traditional targets are increasingly being victimized.

"Retailers who have been affected by organized retail crime for several years may not be seeing increases, but the problem continues to grow as more retailers are being impacted," he said.

The NRF survey also found that the average retailer is now spending $230,000 a year on labor costs to combat organized retail crime, although some spend far higher amounts. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, organized retail crime accounts for as much as $30 billion in retail losses every year in the United States.

The NRF, based in Washington, D.C., is the world's largest trade association, representing 1.6 million U.S. retail businesses.

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Cruelest Felonies in New York City Committed by Albanian Mafia

The Albanian organized crime groups, operating largely in New York City, are carrying out serious criminal offenses, Manhattan Attorney Michael Garcia said.

"Albanian extremist crime groups have emerged in the city and became more active. So far, we cannot say whether these groups dominate, but they commit the cruelest felonies," Garcia said.

Albanian organized crime penetrated in the European Union countries as well as in the United States since the start of the war in Kosovo, when Albanians were granted a status of ethnic refugees, Russian Ria Novosti news agency said.

A number of experts estimate that Albanian narco-mafia was directly linked with Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), seen by many US experts as terrorist group.

Experts say the Balkan route provides 25-40% of the entire heroine market in the United States.

FBI says in its report that Albanian mafia have emerged as a serious organized crime problem, threatening to displace La Cosa Nostra families as kingpins of U.S. crime.

Official statistical data show that in New York only, there are around 150.000 Albanians - migrants from Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania.

Thanks to Maxfax

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Victory for Organized Crime and Drug Traffickers at the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal prosecutors have gone too far in their use of money laundering charges to combat drug traffickers and organized crime.

In two decisions — one a 5-4 split, the other unanimous — the justices found that money laundering charges apply only to profits of an illegal gambling ring and cannot be used when the only evidence of a possible crime is when someone hides large amounts of cash in his car when heading for the border.

The government brings money laundering cases against more than 1,300 people annually and the justices appeared to agree with defense lawyers who said government prosecutors have been stretching the bounds of the law. The Justice Department drew little sympathy from Justice Antonin Scalia.

"The government exaggerates the difficulties" of enforcing a narrowed interpretation of money laundering, Scalia wrote in the gambling case involving an illegal lottery. Scalia drew the support of three other justices. The deciding fifth vote came in a separate opinion from a member of the liberal wing of the court, Justice John Paul Stevens. Stevens declined to go as far as Scalia did in rejecting the government's position.

While deciding in the defendants' favor in both cases, justices took pains to say that they were engaging in carefully calibrated adjustments, not radical change. Defense lawyers had a different perspective.

"The rulings significantly raise the bar for prosecutors to prove money laundering," said Jeffrey Green, who represents the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Green said the decisions also will significantly affect the white-collar world, where money laundering charges are frequently tacked onto alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the law designed to prosecute American companies that bribe foreign officials.

The White House referred questions on the rulings to the Justice Department, which declined to comment.

Congress enacted the anti-money-laundering law in 1986 after the President's Commission on Organized Crime highlighted the growing problem of "washing" criminal proceeds through overseas bank accounts and legitimate businesses.

The law carries 20-year maximum prison terms and heavy fines on conviction.

In the 5-4 ruling siding with defendants Efrain Santos and Benedicto Diaz, a federal judge and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said that paying off gambling winners and compensating employees who collect the bets don't qualify as money laundering. Those are expenses, and prosecutors must show that profits were used to promote the illegal activity, the appeals court ruled in a decision affirmed by the Supreme Court.

At oral arguments before the court last October, the Justice Department spelled out the problem of separating profit from gross receipts in a criminal enterprise. "Criminals often don't keep accounting records," the Justice Department solicitor general's office argued.

In the case decided unanimously, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that a money laundering case against a man headed to Mexico with $81,000 in cash cannot be proven merely by showing that the funds were concealed in a secret compartment of a car.

Instead, the court said that prosecutors must show that the purpose of transporting funds in a money laundering case was to conceal their ownership, source or control.

In passing the money laundering law, Congress intended to fill a gap in law enforcement by preventing the concealment and reinvestment of money derived from criminal activity.

Between $8 billion and $25 billion a year from Mexican and Colombian drugs is moved across the border and laundered, says the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.

The cases are U.S. v. Santos, 06-1005, and Cuellar v. U.S., 06-1456.

Thanks to Pete Yost

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