Washington — In a rare show of bipartisanship, Congress is working toward a measure to boost law enforcement efforts against cargo theft, gift card fraud and other retail crimes — issues of particular importance to states like Michigan that serve as supply chain hubs with busy international crossings.
“For Meijer, just like most retailers, this has really been a challenge,” said Peter Jaeckle, vice president of asset protection at the Michigan-based grocery giant. “We’ve been working pretty hard to combat this from a lot of different angles, everything from return fraud to traditional shoplifting, and then ultimately organized retail crime.”
Sophisticated theft, according to retail and trucking industry trade groups, has “skyrocketed” since the COVID-19 pandemic to the point where businesses are urgently seeking support from the federal government.
Help might be on the way after the U.S. House passed a bill called the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act last month by an overwhelming 348-60 margin, including support from all but one member of Michigan’s delegation. Some have stridently opposed the measure, which would steepen criminal penalties and centralize coordination in a controversial federal agency, but advocates are optimistic about passage in the Senate.
“What you’ve seen this year is, I think, a sea change in support,” said Henry Hanscom, the chief advocacy and public affairs officer at the American Trucking Associations. “I mean, the fact that this was voted out unanimously by the House Judiciary Committee a few months ago, that’s a committee that agrees on basically nothing.”
The number of cargo theft incidents has remained relatively stable, but the average value of those incidents has risen significantly, per Verisk. The data analytics and risk assessment firm reported that business losses from cargo theft totaled nearly $725 million across the United States and Canada in 2025, a 60% increase over the previous year.
The broader economic impact to Michigan, the region and the nation is likely worth billions more than that, trade groups say, when accounting for factors like reputational harm to brands, added security burdens and money needed to replenish stolen merchandise.
“Michigan sits at one of the most important crossroads in North American commerce,” William Hallan, president and CEO of the Michigan Retailers Association, wrote in a recent Detroit News op-ed.
“The Ambassador Bridge alone handles roughly $390 million in trade per day, while our ports, highways, rail lines and retail corridors move millions of products to consumers across the Midwest. That network is the backbone of our economy. And increasingly, organized criminal enterprises are exploiting it at every stage, from warehouses and cargo yards to store shelves and online marketplaces,” he added.
Public sector data on organized retail crime is limited. Researchers at Western Michigan University and Texas Christian University wrote in a 2025 paper that companies underreport theft due to fear of negative publicity, and information collection by law enforcement is often disjointed.
That gap in public data has helped fuel debate at times among supporters and opponents as to whether reform is needed.
Groups warn state actions aren’t enough
Retail and cargo groups, for their part, say criminal theft schemes have become more advanced and diverse in recent years, requiring novel enforcement techniques and additional policing resources.
“You think back to ‘The Fast and the Furious’ where it was Vin Diesel riding up on a truck and taking goods. It’s not that,” said Hanscom, referencing the action movie series.
“Now it’s things like spoofing Department of Transportation numbers, spoofing brokerages, and freight just disappears,” he said, referring to the practice of fraudulent shipping companies impersonating legitimate ones when picking up cargo loads.
Hanscom said features at new border crossings like the Gordie Howe International Bridge — which operators said will have 36 primary inspection lanes, warehouse parking spaces and bays for advanced large-scale imaging — could help detect stolen goods, but the trucking industry advocate emphasized that there are many important points in the physical and digital chain of commerce.
Stolen goods, Hanscom and others explained, are increasingly sold online, which gives criminals a wider commercial network to profit from.
Congress has tried to target dubious online sellers via the INFORM Act, which requires marketplaces like Amazon to look out for criminals reselling stolen items. But lawmakers have expressed doubt over compliance with the 2022 law.
There has also been a spike in gift fraud, which can take multiple forms. Scammers may, for example, harvest information from unactivated gift cards, wait for a shopper to legitimately purchase and load money onto that card, and then quickly drain the balance before the shopper can use it.
Jaeckle, the Meijer asset protection executive, declined to discuss specifically how his company deals with cargo, retail and gift card thefts, but he did point to several news reports of closed investigations into scammers and thieves who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the grocery chain.
He noted that the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has been a partner in some of those investigations. Nessel has been active on the issue, successfully lobbying the legislature in Lansing for changes to Michigan’s racketeering laws and for $3.5 million in state funds to create a dedicated organized retail crime unit.
She signed a letter with 37 other attorneys general across the country last year urging Congress to pass the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, commonly known as CORCA.
“Many of our offices have formed task forces and created prosecution units to combat this growing problem but our resources are finite,” the AGs wrote in the letter, which also called a proposed federal coordination hub a “force multiplier” for combating the “complex crossborder nature of organized retail crime.”
“Beyond what we see at the local level, a significant component of organized retail crime is cargo theft, which disrupts supply chains and acts as an inflationary pressure on the price of everything from baby formula to clothing.”
Bill would centralize enforcement
The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, often abbreviated CORCA, would make several forms of retail and cargo theft more serious offenses under federal law and add a new center within the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate enforcement actions at all levels of government.
The legislation would deepen consequences for a series of crimes — like physically stealing from trucks and trains, fraudulently impersonating legitimate freight carriers, transporting stolen goods across state lines and selling those goods — by labeling them so-called predicate offenses.
Predicate offenses are underlying crimes that allow prosecutors to go after alleged criminals via broader, more severe laws. In this case, a series of retail and cargo crimes will now be predicate offenses for the federal money laundering statute.
A federal money laundering conviction carries up to 20 years in prison, on top of sentences for underlying convictions. Proponents of the bill also say that tying theft to money laundering will allow prosecutors to go after the financial backers of criminal operations, not just the people performing theft or fraud on the ground.
The bill would also tap U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to operate a new, centralized hub in coordinating action to root out cargo theft. The center would be housed within ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, the principal criminal investigative arm for DHS.
Other federal agencies involved in that effort would include Customs and Border Protection, the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the U.S. Postal Inspection Services and the FBI.
Overpolicing worries remain
Previous versions of the bill, first introduced in 2022, focused more on retail theft with less emphasis on freight or gift card schemes. The legislation drew opposition from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which signed on to a letter condemning the proposal.
“This bill relies on old, outdated data and, as a result, reacts to fear over facts to promote failed punitive policies that would further criminalize poverty and potentially cause disproportionate harm on Black and Brown communities,” the letter said.
It continued: “(T)he very premise of CORCA and its supposed necessity rest on old, outdated data and overblown fears — spread by irresponsible media — about purported increases in organized retail crime instead of actual facts.”
“The National Retail Federation claimed that nearly half of the industry’s $94.5 billion in missing merchandise in 2021 was due to organized theft, but was forced to retract that claim when the data showed that it was in fact closer to five percent,” the letter said, citing a New York Times story on the topic.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the coalition that put together the letter, did not respond to a request for comment on the latest version of the bill.
The Vera Institute, a nonprofit criminal justice reform group that has been at odds with both the Trump administration and the top Republican sponsor of CORCA in the Senate, has continued to oppose the legislation.
“CORCA would massively expand DHS’s power — at a moment when the agency is already out of control,” Alex Pareene wrote for Vera. “Communities, businesses, and workers deserve real solutions to retail theft. But giving more power and surveillance authority to DHS is not the right answer. While CORCA is intended to address ‘organized retail crime,’ it will inevitably sweep up people shoplifting because they are experiencing poverty.”
Retail and cargo groups say their aim — and the legislation’s aim — is to do no such thing.
“We’ve had conversations with folks on the Hill about it, who said, ‘Well, this is going to penalize someone who’s just stealing a loaf of bread to feed their families.’ That’s not what we’re looking at,” said Hanscom of the American Trucking Associations.
“We’re going after organized theft groups who are interstate or international, and you know, inflicting huge harm on the supply chain. It’s not the petty theft. It is the people who are stealing a load of energy drinks and moving it out of the country.”
All but one member of Michigan’s U.S. House delegation — progressive Detroit Democrat Rashida Tlaib — supported the CORCA bill when it passed the chamber in May.
“I voted against this bill because it would vastly expand the power of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security to surveil and criminalize our communities,” Tlaib said in a statement.
She continued: “Groups like the NAACP, National Urban League, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, National Action Network, and ACLU oppose this bill because it gives the rogue, lawless DHS sweeping new authority to collect and share our personal information with no meaningful safeguards or oversight. This bill makes us less safe and empowers more DHS and ICE abuses in our communities.”
Four Michigan representatives, including two Republicans and two Democrats, signed on as co-sponsors to the widely popular measure. There were 206 co-sponsors in all.
“My first job after I graduated college was working loss prevention in retail, so I know firsthand the damage theft can do to a business,” U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, said after the bill passed.“This bipartisan legislation gives law enforcement the tools and coordination they need to finally crack down on these dangerous criminal enterprises and keep our communities safe.”
Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, D-Bay City, similarly praised the bill in a statement: “Criminals who rob businesses and drive up prices for consumers in Michigan need to be held accountable. This bipartisan, commonsense bill will make it easier for local, state, and national law enforcement to coordinate efforts. Together, they will prevent these kinds of crimes from happening in the first place and take the legs out from under these criminal networks.”
Reps. John Moolenaar, R-Caledonia, and Hillary Scholten, D-Grand Rapids, were the other Michigan cosponsors.
Michigan’s U.S. senators have not yet indicated if they will support the measure in their chamber, which requires a 60-40 vote threshold for bills to pass under most circumstances. The office of Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, said he would “carefully review and consider any legislation that comes to the Senate floor.”
gschwab@detroitnews.com
@GrantSchwab
Staff Writer Candice Williams contributed.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Michigan lawmakers join push to cut cargo theft, gift card scams
Reporting by Grant Schwab, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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By Grant Schwab, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
