🎧 Listen: In today's episode of The Journal podcast, rebeccaballhaus explains how organized crime rings orchestrate a brazen kind of shoplifting plaguing America's retail stores
This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Rebecca Ballhaus: It's not one-off thieves entering a store and taking whatever they want. It's a much more systematic targeting of these stores. They're stealing because they have become part of a larger operation that is giving them essentially a list of things to go get and then sell back to them.Rebecca Ballhaus: It used to be that organized retail crime was ending up in flea markets and pawn shops, or just being resold on the street.
Rebecca Ballhaus: Store employees are instructed not to try and interfere because it's a security risk for them. They don't want people getting into altercations with shoplifters who could turn violent. So people who are working in stores are told don't apprehend anybody. And so we heard some accounts from people who said that they've been in a CVS when a shoplifter has come in and just grabbed a bunch of stuff. And the store employee has just sort of said, please don't.
Rebecca Ballhaus: There was one case that we looked at in Texas where stolen goods were ending up in this house that had been just completely turned into a warehouse, complete with an elevator that was actually moving goods between floors. And you just see shelves crammed with boxes that appear to be stolen from Home Depot and other home goods stores.Rebecca Ballhaus: Yeah. It's absolutely a fairly professional operation, as far as a crime ring goes.
Ben Dugan: Well, it's a job. And I've had the opportunity to interview so many of these guys, and that's how they treat it. Like, hey, it's just a job. I get up in the morning, I have my 12 to 15 stores to go to. I'm going to hit my stores, get my product, ship it out, and then start again the very next day. So it's not this real sexy type crime.
Rebecca Ballhaus: Investigators had been hearing for quite a while about someone named Daniel the Medicine Man. And they were trying to figure out who that might be. Ryan Knutson: Drago. Full name, Danny Drago. also known as Daniel the Medicine Man. Ben, working with law enforcement, had found his target. The guy he kept hearing about. Prosecutors alleged that Danny and his wife, Michelle Fowler, were running a robust operation out of this warehouse, just a 30 minute drive outside San Francisco. How big of an operation did Drago run?
Ryan Knutson: CVS estimates that Drago and Fowler we're pulling in $5 million a year selling stolen goods. Last fall, they were charged with a number of crimes, including criminal profiteering and money laundering. They both pleaded not guilty.
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