Sep 15, 2026
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4 min read
Amazon spent nine months trying to keep an AI agent off its store and lost. Nobody has written the rules for what happens next.
Sep 8, 2026
Cross-retailer offender databases now span 85,000 stores. No independent evaluation has ever shown they reduce loss.
Sep 1, 2026
Peak concentrates the exposure onto the smallest seasonal workforce since 2009 — and the count that would tell you what it cost happens twice a year.
Aug 26, 2026
Three years of ORC legislation, record enforcement, and improving shrink — and nobody can connect them.
Aug 18, 2026
Gift card draining is organized, federal, and growing 25% a year. It appears nowhere in your loss reporting — by design.
Aug 10, 2026
NRF killed the shrink survey and replaced it with a theft and violence report. Nobody told the audit committee.
Aug 4, 2026
Cargo theft losses rose 60% on flat volume. Six in ten retailers don't count any of it as shrink.
Jul 28, 2026
3 min read
Edition #13 — 1.2 million demand letters a year. Fewer than ten lawsuits. A court called it extortion.
Jul 21, 2026
Edition #12 — Returns fraud runs USD 76–101 billion a year, several times the ORC number. It reports to nobody.
Jul 14, 2026
Edition #11 — The vendor's own patents put the cost of locked cases at 25–50% of sales. Nobody reports that line.
Jul 7, 2026
Edition #10 — Self-checkout was a labor decision. The loss data arrived eight years late.
Jun 30, 2026
Edition #09 — Why the number AP reports up the chain is not the number that matters
Jun 23, 2026
Edition #08 — Who funds the studies your business case is built on
Jun 17, 2026
Edition #07 — The surveillance apparatus AP built is becoming the lawsuit AP defends
Jun 9, 2026
5 min read
Edition #06 — Eaten from below. Capped in the middle. Closed at the top.
Jun 2, 2026
Edition #05 — Why retail employee theft has $26B of investigation behind it and employer wage theft has almost none
May 26, 2026
Edition #04 — Why returns just ate the loss prevention conversation
May 12, 2026
Edition #02 — When the earnings call and the operating floor tell different stories
May 5, 2026
Edition #01 — Why loss prevention moved from the back room to the boardroom
