WiltonKnight: Leftists gone wild

More evidence-free babble.

Like so many retailers these days, Home Depot found it was having a retail theft problem. Home Depot loss-prevention investigators started tracking thefts and tried to get local police involved but they weren't especially interested until Home Depot watched two people leaving a Florida store with two cordless impact wrenches and cordless die grinders without paying and provided vehicle information on the suspects to law enforcement.

Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Department kept an eye on the two individuals over a two-month period and saw them visit stores in seven counties.

When officers arrested the two people, one of them told law enforcement that she had been working with a man named Robert Dell for five years, and at one point, she was making up to $10,000 a day working for Dell, formerly a pastor at The Rock Church near Tampa, who also worked with the recovery program affiliated with the church. Dell sold the goods on eBay.

According to Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody's announcement of Dell's arrest in August, Dell's wife and mother would assist with packaging them and selling them online. Investigators say that Dell sold the merchandise under an eBay store named the "Anointed Liquidator." According to the website, it is been active since 2011 and sold 35,000 items.

The Florida Organized Retail Crime Exchange also arrested an organized crime group who allegedly were involved in a retail theft operation that spanned 16 counties in Florida, costing Home Depot an estimated $1.1 million.

So police investigations and investigative reporting suggest that retailers have been the targets of organized theft rings.

The National Retail Federation "said organized retail crime and other theft served as a primary driver of the massive amount of 'shrink' that retailers saw last year, with non-employee stealing making up 36%."

No doubt shoplifters shoplift but evidence suggests the most significant causes of 'shrink' point to organized crime, organized theft rings, and employee theft rather than the 'woke' mob or 'Democrats in the city' but, hey, you do you.

usatoday.com - Florida pastor robert dell home theft charges

foxbusiness.com - Here cities most plagued organized retail crime report