LEG.037.a07

WHEREAS, organized crime involving the obtaining by fraud and theft of retail merchandise is a nationwide problem of an increasing scale and is expected to cost American companies and consumers at least $30 billion in calendar year 2006; and

WHEREAS, the black market redistribution and storage of stolen and fraudulently obtained consumer products such as baby formula, over-the-counter drugs, and other products by persons engaged in such organized crime is a health and safety hazard to American consumers; and

WHEREAS, the unregulated black market sales of such fraudulently obtained and stolen merchandise results in an estimated $1.6 billion loss in tax revenues to state and local governments; and

WHEREAS, the illegal proceeds from the expanding theft and resale of stolen retail goods is reasonably believed to benefit persons and organizations engaged in other forms of organized crime such as drug trafficking, gang activity, and terrorism; and

WHEREAS, state and local law enforcement has historically regulated the trafficking in stolen property through regulations that required pawnshops and other secondhand good resellers to identify the sellers of such goods and to provide specific information concerning the goods to permit the tracing of stolen goods; and

WHEREAS, the exponential growth in sales volume for online marketplaces has resulted in the widespread and increasing use by organized retail crime rings of the internet to conduct anonymous sales of stolen and fraudulently obtained goods; and

WHEREAS, resellers of stolen property are increasingly able to escape the reach of property tracing and seller identification requirements imposed by state and local governments by moving their operations on to the internet and thereby conduct their operations in an increasingly interstate and international stolen goods market; and

WHEREAS, the dramatic growth in organized retail and other forms of property crime cannot be reasonably curtailed without the federal government restricting the growing and unfettered internet market for stolen property by removing the cloak of anonymity for such sales and permitting victims of property crime to more readily identify their stolen property on internet auction sites; and

WHEREAS, the Organized Retail Crime Act of 2007 encourages internet auction site operators to assist in curbing the growth of stolen property fencing on their internet sites by adopting and implementing commonsense, due diligence procedures used by state and local governments to control such property fencing through pawnshops such as removing the anonymity of high volume sellers of property and posting serial numbers and other means to trace the disposition of stolen property; and

WHEREAS, the Organized Retail Crime Act of 2007 makes it easier for law enforcement to identify stolen property and to prosecute interstate and international fencing operations and internet auction sites that profit from the sale of stolen property while offering reasonable protection from prosecution to responsible internet auction sites that may unknowingly permit such sales but have taken good faith efforts to prevent such conduct by implementing the specified reasonable precautions to reduce stolen property sales; therefore be it

RESOLVED that the International Association of Chiefs of Police urges the U.S. Congress to enact The Organized Retail Crime Act of 2007 to combat organized property crime involving theft and interstate fencing of stolen property.