Baby formula, toothpaste, razors, and Tylenol are all high theft items. But what do they have in common? They’re easy to resell, and hard to trace.
These items are being stolen to order on behalf of crime rings. The organizers have produced shoplifting lists of items to steal, along with a list of prices they will pay. They then enlist desperate junkies, or anyone with few morals and little to lose, to take the shoplifting risk and mule the goods out of the stores. Upon delivering them to the waiting ring member, they get paid in cash.
As for the stolen merchandise? The mob resells it to bodegas or other small stores. The merchandise is often resold through channels that look like legitimate wholesalers. One such organization was so successful that they operated a warehouse in which they repackaged the stolen goods into pristine cardboard boxes, sealed them with an industrial tape machine, then used delivery trucks to ship them. To the bodega owner, they arrived exactly like any other products they ordered, it just cost them a bit less than their normal channels.
If you buy these goods deliberately, you should know they were not handled with care at any point after having been stolen. They could have been exposed to high heat, moisture, mold, or worse.
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