UK Lost £603m to Retail Crime in 2014
Three-million offensesagainst UK retailers in 2014 racked up direct costs of £603 million ($913 million U.S.) in 2014 – while the number of in-store thefts fell by four percent, the value per incident climbed 36 percent.
In addition, most retail fraud is now committed online, reports the British Retail Consortium (BRC). Frauds accounted for 37 percent of the total cost of retail crime in 2014. Thirty percent of retailers in a BRC report said that fraud, including cyber-enabled fraud, would be the most significant threat in the next two years, followed by theft by customers (18 percent), theft of customer details (15 percent) and theft by staff (10 percent).
With the higher rates of Internet-enabled crime, “higher risk” offenses such as burglary, robbery and criminal damage were all down in 2014. According to the BRC report, “From a criminal’s perspective, committing a crime from behind a computer is likely to be viewed as lower risk than carrying out a robbery, for example.”
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