Crime and terrorism
From Bwtm
Crime Money Makes Insurgency Self-Sufficient, U.S. Report Says
November 26, 2006 NEW YORK -- The Iraq insurgency has become financially self-sustaining, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, corrupt charities and other crimes, the New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
According to a classified U.S. government report, a copy of which the newspaper said it obtained, groups responsible for many of the insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising an estimated $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities.
About $25 million to $100 million of the total comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry aided by "corrupt and complicit" Iraqi officials, the newspaper said, citing the report.
As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid over hundreds of kidnappings. Unnamed foreign governments -- identified in the past by senior U.S. officials as including France and Italy -- paid kidnappers $30 million in ransom last year alone, the report said.
The report, completed in June, was provided to the newspaper by U.S. officials in Iraq, who told the Times they had done so in hopes that the findings could improve U.S. understanding of the challenges faced in Iraq.
Some terrorism experts outside the government who were given an outline of the report by the Times criticized it for a lack of precision and a reliance on speculation, the newspaper said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/25/AR2006112500779.html
Theft rings hit grocers
Medicine cabinet items apparently swiped for resale
May 10, 2006 By the way they are organized, you'd think they were planning a high-class heist -- Paul Allen's art collection, perhaps.
Instead, teams of criminals linked by cell phones have fanned out across Western Washington to steal all the Visine eye drops, Crest White Strips, Prilosec heartburn medication, Similac infant formula and Excedrin pain relievers they can get.
It's a major headache for supermarket chains that have reported losing hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of targeted products, often in just a few months.
No one knows how many organizations are involved, said Jason Moulton, Safeway's loss-prevention director in Western Washington.
"It's organized retail theft," said Moulton, a former FBI assistant special agent-in-charge in Seattle. "They've got production schedules, crew chiefs and ship the stuff back to California," where it is sold.
One shoplifter arrested recently in Pierce County told investigators that six groups were working in Pierce and South King counties, and that he was recruited by someone from Southern California.
On March 29, Safeway investigator Jeff Scales caught a man at the store in Crown Hill who had pocketed 21 bottles of Visine. A check of surveillance videotapes revealed that the man had been targeting the store -- wiping out supplies of certain products in nine separate visits.
Chains such as Safeway are responding by placing plainclothes officers in their stores and taking other security measures.
In Washington, supermarket chains and other major retailers persuaded lawmakers last session to adopt new criminal statutes, including theft with intent to resell and organized retail theft.
The laws "up the seriousness level above and beyond what you would be prosecuted for if it were a straight theft," said Clif Finch, vice president of the Washington Food Industry, a trade association representing independent grocers and supermarket chains. Finch said no industrywide figures on losses in Washington from organized retail theft are available, but grocery chains have reported major increases in theft-related losses.
In this region, it became apparent a couple of years ago that supermarkets were facing more than the occasional addict looking to turn stolen merchandise into quick cash. In March 2004, a Safeway investigator began looking into the systematic theft of baby formula from Pierce County stores.
"Store employees reported that groups consisting of both males and females using cell phones to communicate were entering the stores and cleaning the shelves out of Similac Advance with iron, 12.9 oz, $12.99 each," according to an internal Safeway report.
When the investigator began reviewing the surveillance tapes, a pattern became apparent.
"Two to six people in minivans with tinted windows hit several stores in one day, usually weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.," the investigator wrote in the report. "They would park in the perimeter of the parking lot and send one or two people in at a time.
"A male would act as a lookout while the females would put up to eight cans of baby formula into a shoulder bag and walk out of the store. The women typically wear black leather jackets and have black handbags. The whole process takes less than five minutes."
It's the same story in King County.
On Dec. 23, 2004, two of Moulton's investigators, Scales and Stacy Smalls, were working undercover in Kenmore in an attempt to catch whoever was wiping out the store's stock of baby formula.
Just before noon, they spotted a woman with six cans of Similac in her hand basket. The woman was talking on a cell phone and looking toward the direction of the store's doors, according to a Safeway report.
She moved up the aisle and met a man who took the cans from the hand basket, put them in a cloth bag hanging from his shoulder and walked out of the store without paying for them. Smalls followed him while Scales kept an eye on the woman.
The investigators alerted nearby King County Sheriff's Deputy Jeff Durrant, who approached the man as he entered a minivan and ordered him to get out.
When Durrant searched the vehicle, he found 30 cans of Similac worth $430 and 16 packages of Pepcid AC worth $325. The man admitted stealing the merchandise that day from Safeways in Kenmore and Kingsgate.
"It's like the flavor of the day -- almost like they steal to order," said Safeway investigator Gene Blahato of the regional headquarters in Bellevue. "And every time we take countermeasures, they switch products."
Moulton said that "the frustration is we can't get anybody to look at this. There's no law-enforcement organization that is following up."
The local FBI office cited competition for its investigative resources as the reason it has not addressed the organized retail theft problem.
"Terrorism is the No. 1 priority in the state of Washington, and we have fewer and fewer resources to devote these days to other criminal activity like retail theft," said Special Agent Robbie Burroughs.
There's been a lot of speculation on the structure of retail-theft rings: Are they crime syndicates? Terrorist funding schemes?
A U.S. Treasury Department terrorist-financing task force called "Green Quest" lists the theft and resale of infant formula as well as interstate cigarette smuggling as ways by which terrorist groups finance their operations.
FBI agents in Portland broke up a retail theft ring last August that was a traditional criminal enterprise. Agents arrested 27 people on suspicion of trafficking in stolen merchandise and money laundering stemming from the theft of goods from grocery, hardware, drug and department stores, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Oregon.
The goods were resold for 10 to 20 cents on the dollar to "secondhand" stores, which would resell to "wholesalers" for a healthy profit. FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Jordan said the shoplifters were driven by addiction to drugs.
The federal officials in Oregon seized more than $2 million in stolen products, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Westphal. The investigation revealed that an enormous amount of stolen goods are flowing through the pipeline, and they are turned over quickly.
"It's huge," Westphal said. "It has an impact economically that we are not capturing and measuring. But it's certainly there."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/269631_groceryheist10.html
