Issue 12
One retailer. One fraud group. $350K lost in a single year. Almost $1M in total.
What made this scheme infuriating was that store associates recognized the fraudsters every time they walked in. But nobody could stop them. Why?
Because their scheme ran in a 15 minute gap between when a transaction hit the register and when it appeared in the returns management database. Just long enough for a stolen item to be returned at a second location using the original e-receipt before the first transaction was even visible to the system.
The fix came from an investigative systems expert who knew which technical team owned the database, and how to get them to act.
But first, your industry brain teaser of the week:
What percentage of shoppers have switched retailers because in-store and online return policies felt different?
Scroll to the bottom for the answer.
What's In Stock
Here’s what we have in store for you this week:
- The Rundown: How to solve a $350k, 15-minute lag problem without a policy change
- Worth Your Time: Where shrink hides between two systems
- What We’re Up To: It’s the final countdown (to our Dallas roadshow)
The Rundown
Most AP escalations to technical teams have requests that are too broad, have missing dollar figures, or land with a team that doesn’t own the relevant system. That means the fraud keeps running.
What made this case different was how the investigative systems expert built the ask. Four steps took them from a field pattern to a database fix — and the fraud group hasn’t been back since.
- Document the method, not just the loss. The team mapped the full sequence: which stores, which items, the time between purchase and return, the repeat offenders. A technical team won’t reprioritize database work for a vague fraud trend. They will for a reconstructed scenario.
- Attribute the dollar to the specific gap. $350K in annual losses tied directly to a 15-minute database lag lands differently than a shrink report. It made the POS team’s involvement feel absolutely necessary.
- Find the right technical partner and make a scoped ask. The request went to the POS team — the group that owned the returns management database — with one concrete question: close the lag between transaction completion and data visibility.
- Confirm closure and watch for displacement. When the fix went live, the group tried the scheme again. It failed. The fix held at every location, across every brand, simultaneously.
How to quantify loss when the dollar figure isn’t precise and more are in this week’s playbook.
Worth Your Time
We know time is money, so we won’t waste yours
- More than 60% of retailers say poor data quality is an operational problem, which is exactly how shrink stays hidden between POS and warehouse records (Loss Prevention Media).
- Brands are already writing temporary holiday return policies, with 58% of shoppers saying they’ve walked away from a brand over its return terms (Modern Retail).
- None of the retailers in ECR’s returns study could say what a single return actually costs them, and cutting the return rate by 5% is worth roughly 200 basis points of net margin (ECR Retail Loss).
What We're Up To
As we count down the days until Appriss’s next road show stop in Dallas on October 14, we’re looking forward to discussing all things Total Retail Loss (TRL) in real life (IRL). Thinking of joining us? You’ll be in good company with peers across LP, ops, ecomm, and finance and will hear firsthand from leaders at Foot Locker, At Home, and more on how they’re taking a modern approach to loss prevention.
You’ll have the chance to see a sneak peek of the product roadmap, get hands-on with our latest capabilities, run your returns exposure math live, and more. And of course, the agenda includes plenty of time for networking and peer-to-peer discussion on what challenges teams are facing today and how others are overcoming similar hurdles (hint: it involves uncovering the full picture of loss across all channels).
There’s still time to register, but spots are limited. RSVP here.
