How Stolen Goods End Up On Amazon, eBay And Facebook Marketplace

The problem is that the punishment for theft, even when it involves organized crime, is so minor that the risk/reward is worth it to those who have nothing to lose.

The guy who says retailers blow it out of proportion is nuts. Because of ppl like him, feeling sorry for thieves, it will only get worse.

Now my local grocery store has shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, and laundry detergent locked up behind plexiglass. As time goes on, they lock up more and more items in the store. Pretty soon we'll need a grocery store employee to follow us when we're shopping to unlock the cases one by one as we select items to buy.

One problem with the program to require sellers to provide proof of identity and bank account, is that eBay (the people who had 14 million account details sold online after a hack last year) then holds a copy of your driver license or passport and your bank account details which they make no guarantees to secure. If Congress wants me to trust online sellers and provide them that kind of information, legislate that the platform MUST provide a bond against their being hacked and losing my information into the wild for resale.

Instead of trying to stop the resale, wouldn't it make more sense to stop the theft in the first place? With strict laws and more punishment?

Years of living a dangerous life has taught me that a tough man knows when and how to get out of a situation, but a smart man never gets himself into one.

I was at a Harbor Freight store and while checking out, I heard a commotion and doors opening fast. Turns out an old guy had walked out with a bunch of power tools and the cashier lady informed me it happens quite regularly. There needs to be harsher punishments when the risk/reward is worth it as someone else said. It shouldn't be that way

This is old school. Kids did this when I was young. A whole neighborhood would get together and hit the mall. A mall closed down because of all the theft that was happening.

The Home Depot fire was just around the corner from us - a police helicopter told us to "be prepared to move!" while my husband was up on the roof with the hose (and still-burning embers the size of dinner plates were raining down in our backyard). No exaggeration. Utterly ridiculous and obscene to think about the potential loss of life and homes, and pets (there was a Doggie Daycare next door that had to be evacuated) - all for a few thousand dollars worth of tools. Despicable. I am glad to see that the online marketplace is being more closely scrutinized.

The Home Depot security cameras that tell you to enjoy your shopping experience remind me of Idiocracy, "Welcome to Costco, I love you".

I worked 15 years at Home Depot. The amount of empty packages we found daily is unreal. But because the losses come off the employee profit share program head office doesn't have to worry about it unless the amount gets higher then that. It should come out of upper managements bonuses to get them to take it seriously. You can say the floor associates need to watch their isles better but that is not possible when they cut hours to help boost managements bonuses.

Theft should be prosecuted, no matter the amount, small items is how they start, it escalates to bigger crimes.

With the way inflation is there’s gonna be more and more people looking for hot deals

Who would have thought ebay is doing more to combat theft than Amazon and Facebook.

I love how the words “while punishment for shoplifters is hotly debated” was shoved in there very quickly and bypassed in seconds lol 🙄

I like how this very quickly shifts the focus from the thieves to the people websites they use to sell their stolen items. Maybe let’s focus on stopping the theft in the first place?

I use to work for a company that was hired by retailers to try and best their system in any way possible. It was crazy how fast new and improved boosting methods came along before we would publicly acknowledge that we knew their current means. If I could steal 20K of product in a mock run, they would find a way to take 30K next time, in plain sight.

"simple shop lifting by those in need". They know how to play with words!!.😂

Simple shoplifting by people in need is very rare. The vast majority of the time the people shoplifting are not doing it just because they're in need. It's because they want something and are unwilling to pay the sacrifice to get that thing.

They sell counterfeit items on Amazon, too. Even "Amazon LLC" as a seller stocks and sells counterfeit items. I paid $170 to Amazon LLC for a Corsair gaming keyboard and received a counterfeit. The counterfeit keyboard had a defect and Corsair refused to fix the keyboard when they discovered this. Amazon refused to do anything about it when I notified their customer support.