Organized retail crime is coordinated, multi-location activity that quietly drains profit and escalates risk for your team and your business. With an estimated $45 billion in annual losses, ORC is responsible for many of the largest loss events in retail, and traditional tools like isolated cameras, store-level reports, and manual video review can’t keep up.
Effective organized retail crime prevention depends on seeing patterns across stores, SKUs, and timeframes, then responding with consistent, data-driven playbooks. In this blog we break down 11 proven strategies for organized retail crime prevention, from exception-based investigations and multi-store pattern detection to video-verified alarms, GSOC centralization, and AI-driven video analytics. You’ll see how AI-driven video intelligence solutions like Solink connect video, POS, access control, and alarms into a single pane of view so you can detect ORC activity earlier, protect your people, and reduce shrink at scale.
Key takeaways
ORC is coordinated, repeated, and cross-location, not just “shoplifting”
Visibility and pattern detection are the biggest gaps in prevention
Exception-based, data-triggered workflows beat manual video review
Multi-store oversight, GSOC centralization, and risk tiering are essential
AI-driven video intelligence solutions like Solink connect video and data to detect ORC earlier and strengthen investigations
Organized retail crime (ORC) is way more impactful to businesses than most security and loss prevention leaders realize. And the problem is, it’s different to any other form of theft. It is not random shoplifting. It is not isolated. And it is not confined to one store.
Organized retail crime is coordinated, strategic, and often repeated across multiple locations. It frequently includes:
Coordinated group theft
Repeat targeting of high-value SKUs
Resale through online marketplaces
Fraudulent returns and refund abuse
Supply chain and cargo theft
Phone and digital scams targeting store personnel
US businesses face immense losses from organized retail crime, with the estimated figure standing at around $45 billion in annual losses.
The pressure on loss prevention and security leaders is intense. Shrink continues to impact margins, and ORC is responsible for a disproportionate share of large-loss events. At the same time, security teams are expected to do more with the same or fewer resources.
What makes organized retail crime different from shoplifting
Understanding the difference between opportunistic shoplifting and organized retail crime is foundational to effective prevention. If you approach ORC the same way you approach everyday theft, you will always be reacting instead of preventing.
Opportunistic shoplifting
Opportunistic shoplifting is typically individual, impulsive, and isolated. It often involves a single person taking easily accessible items without much planning. While it contributes to shrink in your business, it usually lacks coordination and scale. In many cases, traditional deterrents such as visible staff presence, locked cases, or EAS tags can often reduce these incidents. You can learn more prevention methods in our blog, The best ways to spot and stop a shoplifter.
Typically individual
Unplanned
Isolated event
Often reactive
Organized retail crime
Organized retail crime, on the other hand, is coordinated and structured. ORC groups plan their activity, target high-value items, and frequently operate across multiple locations. They test response times, study store layouts, and identify staffing or policy gaps. When resistance is low or procedures are inconsistent, they escalate. Many also rely on resale channels – both physical and online – to quickly monetize stolen goods.
Typically individual
Unplanned
Isolated event
Often reactive
The key difference is repetition and pattern. ORC actors repeat tactics until something changes. They exploit operational inconsistencies between stores and look for environments where response is slow or fragmented. And it’s not always straight up theft, organized retail crime can also involve employees across your business working with ORC group and committing crimes such as refund fraud at scale.
That’s why organized retail crime prevention requires more than cameras and store-level reporting. It requires pattern detection across locations, unified visibility into transactions and behavior, and the ability to connect signals before loss compounds. ORC is not just theft, it is coordinated activity that must be addressed with coordinated intelligence.
COO guide to AI-driven retail loss prevention and risk reduction
Retailers lose an estimated $132 billion annually to shrink – and that’s only part of the total loss picture.
And retailers know it. The report found 89% of retail leaders are aware of total retail loss, and 64% report it has already impacted the way their organization manages loss. Yet only 55% say they can actually calculate total retail loss across their business, largely because the data required is still siloed, incomplete, or inconsistently captured across functions.
The 11 proven strategies for organized retail crime prevention
Organized retail crime prevention is not about reacting faster. It’s about seeing patterns earlier, coordinating more effectively, and eliminating blind spots that ORC groups exploit. The strategies below are not theoretical. They reflect what high-performing loss prevention teams are operationalizing in 2026.
1. Build exception-based investigation workflows
Most loss prevention teams waste time manually reviewing footage without knowing where to look. That model does not scale, especially when ORC actors deliberately hide activity within normal operations.
Exception-based workflows change the starting point. Instead of asking investigators to “find something suspicious,” the system flags high-risk transaction events first – such as clustered voids, high-value refunds, no-sale drawer openings, or repeated price overrides – and links them directly to video.
Operationally, this means:
Investigators review moments with statistical risk, not random footage.
Repeat behaviors by store, shift, or cashier surface quickly.
Coaching issues are separated from intentional fraud.
The key implementation shift is this: Move from footage-driven investigations to data-triggered investigations. This reduces review time and increases investigative precision.
2. Detect multi-store patterns instead of store-level events
ORC groups rarely operate in isolation. They test one location, then repeat methods across others. Many retailers fail here because their data is siloed. Store A doesn’t know what happened in Store B. Regions operate independently. Patterns remain invisible.
High-performing programs:
Compare incident types across locations.
Track high-risk SKUs by geography.
Identify similar time bands of activity.
Analyze behavior, not just shrink totals.
This requires centralized visibility. When you can see that three stores were targeted using the same distraction method within 72 hours, you can intervene proactively instead of treating them as separate events. Prevention shifts from reactive to predictive.
3. Deploy video-verified alarm systems
Alarm fatigue is one of the most underestimated risks in ORC prevention. If alarms trigger frequently without verification, teams become desensitized. Law enforcement response credibility erodes. Real threats are buried.
Video-verified alarms fundamentally change response posture. Instead of dispatching blindly:
Alarms are paired with real-time visual confirmation.
False positives are filtered out.
Response decisions are made with context.
The operational benefit is twofold:
Teams respond faster to real threats.
External partners (including law enforcement) take alerts more seriously.
4. Monitor perimeters and parking lots for reconnaissance
ORC often begins long before the product leaves the shelf or the refund fraud takes place. Reconnaissance behaviors include:
Vehicles idling near entrances.
Repeated short visits.
Groups entering and exiting without purchases.
After-hours surveillance.
Most stores only focus on interior theft. That leaves blind spots outside. Modern ORC prevention includes:
Monitoring dwell time outside storefronts.
Identifying unusual staging behavior.
Flagging repeated perimeter testing.
5. Harden access control to back-of-house areas
ORC actors increasingly target:
Receiving docks
Back doors
Stockrooms
High-value locked cabinets
Access control without visibility creates incomplete protection. Best practice includes:
Immediate revocation of credentials.
Monitoring after-hours access attempts.
Linking access logs to video.
Reviewing unusual access patterns regularly.
When access events are correlated with behavior, insider risk and coordinated external theft become easier to detect. Back-of-house is often where high-value loss hides.
Strengthen your ORC defense with Solink
Learn how Solink enhances the 11 strategies for preventing organized retail crime.
6. Standardize evidence packaging for law enforcement
One of the most common loss prevention frustrations is this: By the time evidence is assembled, momentum is lost.
ORC prevention improves dramatically when evidence packaging becomes standardized. This includes:
Timestamped video exports.
Linked transaction records.
Metadata preservation.
Clear incident summaries.
When evidence is organized consistently, case submission time drops and follow-through improves. Even in environments where law enforcement response is inconsistent, standardized evidence helps prioritize the strongest cases.
7. Centralize ORC oversight through a GSOC
Store-level managers cannot manage ORC alone. A centralized GSOC enables:
Cross-location pattern recognition.
Alert triage consistency.Region-level escalation.
Shared intelligence across markets.
Without centralization, ORC actors exploit inconsistencies. With central oversight, prevention becomes coordinated. The most effective programs treat ORC like an ecosystem challenge, not a single-store problem.
8. Extend visibility into the supply chain
ORC is expanding beyond storefront theft into:
Cargo theft.
Delivery manipulation.
Receiving fraud.
Return-to-vendor abuse.
Many retailers focus only on floor-level shrink and ignore upstream vulnerabilities. Modern ORC prevention includes:
How Solink’s AI-driven video intelligence solution strengthens organized retail crime prevention
Solink enhances organized retail crime prevention by unifying video, POS, access control, panic buttons, and alarm data into a single AI-driven intelligence layer.
This enables security and loss prevention leaders to:
Detect multi-store ORC patterns earlier
Connect transactions directly to video
Reduce alert fatigue through verified events
Standardize investigation workflows
Scale prevention across thousands of locations
Act faster with contextual clarity
Solink works with existing camera infrastructure, eliminating the need for costly rip-and-replace projects.
By helping teams see more, know more, and do more, Solink turns organized retail crime prevention into a repeatable, measurable capability. Want to see first-hand how Solink can help your business prevent ORC and improve your operational processes? Book a demo today.
Take control of organized retail crime with Solink
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