A letter penned to the United States Senate on behalf of myriad industry stakeholders this week called for the Senate to pass H.R. 2853, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, which was recently passed by the House of Representatives by a 348-60 margin.
As previously reported by LM, the legislation was introduced in April 2025 by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who also serves as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, and Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio). It has bipartisan support and aims to strengthen the nation’s response to organized retail crime involving the theft of goods for resale through physical and online marketplaces.
Key provisions of the legislation include:
- enhancing coordination among federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to combat organized retail and supply chain crime;
- improve safe information-sharing with retailers, manufacturers, and transportation providers to identify and respond to emerging threats;
- strengthen legal tools to disrupt criminal financing, including clarifying that gift cards may be treated as monetary instruments for money-laundering investigations;
- enable prosecutors to more efficiently target large-scale criminal enterprises by aggregating theft values tied to organized schemes;
- improve transparency by reporting on national trends in organized retail and supply chain crime; and
- establish an Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center within Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) at the Department of Homeland Security, which would enable increased collaboration between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, along with retail crime associations and subject-matter experts, to develop a cohesive strategy to combat these crimes and share valuable resources
Among the industry stakeholders signing onto the letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, and Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin were the American Trucking Associations, Association of American Railroads, C.H. Robinson, BNSF Railway, DHL, FedEx, FedEx Freight, the National Industrial Transportation League, and the National Retail Federation, among others.
The letter explained that organized retail and supply chain crime requires a federal response, as it is being driven by coordinated, multi-state criminal networks, adding that these are not isolated incidents, and current enforcement tools are not keeping pace with the scale and sophistication of these operations.
“And these are not petty theft crimes suited for local enforcement,” it stated. “Organized retail and supply chain crime costs businesses billions of dollars annually, and the average value of each stolen shipment from a truck is over $300,000, costing the industry $18 million per day2. These networks are responsible for large-scale theft, operate across jurisdictions, exploit gaps in coordination, and use evolving technologies and financial channels to expand their reach.”
What’s more, the letter explained that retailers, manufacturers, transportation providers, and workers across the supply chain continue to experience the real-world consequences of these crimes, ranging from heightened risks to frontline employees and transportation workers to disruptions in the movement of goods, by rail or truck or at distribution centers.
Addressing CORCA, the letter said that it enhances information-sharing, supports joint investigations, and improved collaboration between law enforcement and the private sector.
“Importantly, CORCA is narrowly focused on organized criminal conduct,” it said. “It does not address routine retail theft, nor does it expand immigration or border enforcement authorities. Instead, it reflects a targeted, bipartisan effort to close persistent gaps that sophisticated criminal enterprises continue to exploit. The House’s overwhelming bipartisan vote, following unanimous approval in the House Judiciary Committee, demonstrates that Congress can come together to address this growing threat to public safety, workers, and commerce. We respectfully urge Senate leadership to build on this momentum by advancing CORCA for timely consideration and passage in the Senate.”
National Retail Federation Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold recently told LM that that cargo theft has been around for a while and is part of a bigger trend in organized retail crime, in the form of more coordinated efforts to steal products, sell them for profit, and use those profits for more nefarious crimes, which have increased in stores and warehouses, while attacking the supply chain and financial networks.
Gold added that CORCA marks a good first step in addressing these issues, with 200 bipartisan co-sponsors in the House and close to 45 bipartisan co-sponsors in the Senate.
“[These crimes] don’t just happen in one jurisdiction,” he said. “They’re happening across city lines, county lines, state lines and international boundaries. What we need is the center to help put it all together, show the big picture, and help provide resources for state and local law enforcement to go after these bigger fish and go after the bigger criminals. A lot of this is being directed by organizations outside the United States, like transnational criminal organizations, so hopefully this effort allows us to put more money and effort into going after those organized rings, because we’re seeing not just a rise in theft of product, but a rise in violence tied to some of these activities as well, which puts our associates at risk, our customers at risk, and our partners at risk.
And for retailers, it’s not only just working internally on some of these issues, it is also working closely with their transportation providers, especially on kind of the cargo theft side, and making sure they’re using legitimate drivers and legitimate companies for transportation purposes. There’s a lot of things like freight fraud and double brokering and things like that that need to be addressed.”
In April, a group of freight, retail, and manufacturing stakeholders called on Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to take action, regarding the escalation of cargo theft and organized retail crime (ORC), through congressionally mandated measures.
In a letter to Blanche, the group of 24 stakeholders—including the ATA, Association of American Railroads, Intermodal Association of North America, NRF, DHL, and UPS—emphasized the “urgent need” for DOJ to fully implement funding provided by Congress in the FY2026 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) Appropriations Act. The funding would support the establishment of dedicated special prosecutors focused on combating supply chain fraud, organized retail crime, and related financial schemes such as gift card fraud.
“Cargo theft and ORC have escalated dramatically in recent years, affecting freight rail, trucking, retailers, and the broader U.S. economy,” the letter stated. “These crimes are not isolated or opportunistic, but are increasingly carried out by organized, sophisticated criminal networks operating across state and national borders. Through the resale of stolen goods and related monetization schemes, these criminal rings often engage in broader illicit activities, including drug trafficking, money laundering, and terrorism.
The stakeholders outlined several ways the funding could help curb cargo theft and ORC activity:
- develop specialized expertise in complex cargo theft, ORC, and related financial fraud cases;
- strengthen coordination with federal partners such as Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), as well as state and local law enforcement and prosecutors;
- establish a prosecutorial model that can be replicated nationwide; and
- deter increasingly sophisticated criminal enterprises exploiting the supply chain
