Organized retail crime (ORC) in Canada has grown from a $4 billion problem in 2013 to $9.1 billion in 2025. That number is not just a headline. It is the result of criminal networks that are organized, fearless, and operating with near impunity, while store employees, communities, and consumers pay the price.
In this episode, Auror’s Jon Briegel sits down at Retail Council of Canada (RCC)’s Retail Secure Conference with Sean Sportun, Chair of Toronto Crime Stoppers and a three-decade veteran of retail corporate security. Their conversation covers what makes ORC so difficult to solve in Canada, why the community has a bigger role to play than most people realize, and what retailers need to do differently to get law enforcement the intelligence they actually need to act.
Key takeaways from this episode:
- Organized retail crime is not victimless. It fuels violent crime, raises prices for consumers, and is actively driving a workforce safety crisis in retail.
- Siloed data is as much of a problem as the crime itself. If retailers are reporting internally but not sharing intelligence with law enforcement and each other, the full picture never emerges.
- Community awareness is a critical and underused lever. When consumers understand that stolen goods can be dangerous and purchasing them is a criminal offense, the demand side of the supply chain weakens.
A $9 billion problem that most people still call shoplifting
The gap between public perception and reality is one of the most damaging dynamics in retail crime today. Sean has been making this case since 2013, when Toronto Crime Stoppers first put organized retail crime on its radar. The number has more than doubled since. What has not changed is the tendency to dismiss it as petty theft.
"It's being looked at as a victimless crime. It's shoplifting. And part of it is shoplifting when you talk about what causes shrink. But the biggest majority of what we're seeing that is concerning is organized retail thefts. It's the [people] that are coming in with a list, with orders to go and get it. Very, very fearless and not worrying about who's in front of them. It could be an employee, it could be a security guard, or it could be just a member of the public."
The real cost is not just what walks out the door. It is the violence that accompanies it, the impact on a generation of retail workers who no longer feel safe at work, and the consumers unknowingly purchasing stolen goods that may have been stored incorrectly, contaminated, or past their expiration date before being reintroduced into the market.
Sean warns if you buy a product for a fraction of its retail price and do not ask why, you are continuing the cycle of criminality, and in some cases, you could be charged for it.
Why law enforcement alone cannot solve retail crime
Sean is equally clear that the blame does not land on the police. The revolving door is a justice system problem. Officers are responding, making arrests, and watching the same offenders return to the same stores within days. The frustration is shared across retailers, law enforcement, and the communities they serve.
The missing piece is not more officers but better intelligence, shared in a way that law enforcement can actually use. The 10% of people responsible for 61% of stolen retail value in North America are becoming known to retailers and to law enforcement through sharing intelligence through Auror. Getting that information into the hands of people who can act on it is the work.
"You can target a certain problem in a certain area by looking at your data. And if you don't have your data, or your data is not collected in the same portal, and there are different silos collecting data here and here but you're not sharing it, do you really know that you have a problem? The struggle is working with internal stores and operations to say: you need to report. Here are the reasons why you may not see it now, but you will see it later."
When stores report internally but not to police, law enforcement has no call-for-service data to justify a response. When they do respond, they often find the evidence is not packaged in a way they can act on quickly. That gap, between what retailers know and what law enforcement receives, is where cases stall and offenders keep going.
The community's role in disrupting the supply chain
Toronto Crime Stoppers launched its dedicated retail crime awareness website, to address the demand side of the problem. The theory of the site is if stolen goods cannot find a market, the financial incentive for organized theft networks collapses. Making that case to everyday Canadians is harder than it sounds.
Sean's approach is to connect the abstract to the personal. Show people the link between the discounted product they are buying and the gang activity, gun violence, or human trafficking being funded by the same network. Make the health risks concrete. And make reporting as frictionless as possible through anonymous tip lines that feed directly into law enforcement.
Sean's call to action for the public is simple: Ask why something is cheaper than it should be, report what you see through anonymous channels like Crime Stoppers, and understand that staying silent is a choice that keeps the cycle going.
Sean's message is ultimately about shared responsibility. Crime prevention is not a retailer problem or a policing problem. It belongs to the whole community, and the more people understand what is actually fueling the numbers they read about, the harder it becomes to look the other way.
Watch the full episode to hear Sean's perspective on why Canada's privacy regulations create unique challenges for data sharing, the role Crime Stoppers plays as a bridge between retailers and law enforcement, and what he believes needs to change for the justice system to keep pace with the problem.
