How To Shoplift Like A Pro

“Jane” with her stolen copy of Street Bon­ers (All pho­tographs by Kath­leen Ching)

Every­one nabs some­thing now and then — a pack of smokes no one’s mind­ing at a house par­ty, a beer from a bode­ga when you’re al­ready way too drunk, train fare from the MTA by jump­ing a turn­stile. But rou­tine­ly go­ing in­to stores with ded­i­cat­ed loss-pre­ven­tion teams and steal­ing ex­pen­sive things for years with­out be­ing caught, that takes skill. Ap­par­ent­ly my friend — let’s call her Jane — has that skill. She’s been se­ri­ous­ly shoplift­ing for less than three years but do­ing it so reg­u­lar­ly that she’s al­ready amassed over $10,000 worth of stolen mer­chan­dise, and all with­out be­ing stopped by se­cu­ri­ty even once. I sat down with Jane to find out how she does it and what ad­vice she has for kids new to the game. Be­ing a girl, she on­ly lifts clothes, shoes, make­up and oth­er use­less shit, so this won’t help you get a brand new flatscreen for free. But Valen­tine’s Day is com­ing up, so maybe you can get your girl­friend some­thing nice for once.

(Plat­form note: This is all pret­ty US-cen­tric, but most of the ad­vice still ap­plies, use your imag­i­na­tion, UK folks)

Rack of cloth­ing, most­ly stolen

ARV: When did you first start steal­ing stuff?
JANE: It wasn’t un­til I start­ed work­ing for An­thro­polo­gie, like maybe a year or so in. I just didn’t get paid shit and I was there all the time and, I dun­no, I spent way too much mon­ey there. I just start­ed tak­ing stuff slow­ly and I got re­al­ly good at it. It wasn’t re­al­ly un­til I moved here that I start­ed steal­ing from oth­er places.

Do you think you’re a klep­to? Or do you take stuff you ac­tu­al­ly like?
I take stuff I ac­tu­al­ly like and I’ve al­so re­cent­ly tak­en stuff that was re­al­ly ex­pen­sive that I could sell. I’ve nev­er re­al­ly stolen any­thing just to steal, it’s usu­al­ly stuff I like. I prob­a­bly don’t “need” any of this shit but I steal things I want.

Where do you sell this stuff?
I would sell it at Buf­fa­lo Ex­change and Bea­con’s Clos­et. And then I just start­ed sell­ing stuff on eBay ‘cause I had like four dress­es that I didn’t want and they’re re­al­ly ex­pen­sive. I al­so got fired from Bea­con’s, so I just don’t want to fuck­ing sell there any­more. And I made a lot more mon­ey on eBay. I sold some­thing for $130 last week that was orig­i­nal­ly like $500, and then some­thing for $80 the oth­er day.

Top Shop, $450

Is it on­ly stuff from places that you’ve worked?
No. Now I do it at places I un­der­stand, if I un­der­stand the sys­tem and I know what would set the alarm off. If I just feel com­fort­able, ‘cause I want to be smart about it. I don’t ever want to get caught. It’s stu­pid to not be care­ful about it.

What’re the fac­tors you take in­to ac­count?
Is there an alarm sys­tem by the door? What kind of se­cu­ri­ty tags do they use? I al­ways take off any kind of pa­per or any sort of tag on it be­cause you nev­er know. Like the An­thro­polo­gie tag, just those lit­tle card­board ones have sen­sors in them. You nev­er know what has a sen­sor in it so it’s bet­ter to just take every­thing off. Like, feel it and know there’s noth­ing on there.

Is there spe­cial gear that you use, like wear­ing a large coat or us­ing a large bag or mak­ing sure you bring scis­sors with you?
When I stole at An­thro­plo­gie, I would wear bag­gy cloth­ing to work and wear stuff un­der my clothes out be­cause they would check your bag when you left. And then, when I stole from Uniq­lo I’d just shove it in my purse. And now since liv­ing here I’ll some­times wear a coat so I can con­ceal some­thing in or­der to get it in­to the fit­ting room. But nor­mal­ly I need a big shop­ping bag and a purse, be­cause it’s re­al­ly easy to use shop­ping bags.

Where else do you usu­al­ly steal from or have you in the past?
Top Shop. A lot. That’s where I got all the re­al­ly ex­pen­sive dress­es. It was Kate Moss for Top Shop. I’ve stolen from some bou­tiques and some small­er stores, and that I felt bad about, be­cause the whole thing with An­thro­polo­gie was like, I hate this place. It made me feel bet­ter, and that’s re­al­ly why it start­ed. It made me feel bet­ter to get that stuff for free be­cause I didn’t think An­thro­polo­gie de­served my mon­ey and I just didn’t have re­spect for the com­pa­ny.

Ur­ban Out­fit­ters, $400

When you go out to steal some­thing, will you al­so buy some­thing? Like put a bunch of stuff in your bag and then go to the reg­is­ter with one re­al­ly cheap thing?
I’ve con­sid­ered do­ing that be­fore, but then I was think­ing, If some­one is sus­pect­ing me, I should just get the fuck out of there rather than stand­ing in line just to buy some­thing. They’re still go­ing to think some­thing’s shady.

Are there ground rules you fol­low every time you go out? Or do you fig­ure it out on the spot, like what you should do, what you should take?
If I go in­to a place like Ur­ban and there’s not a lot of shop­pers and there’s a ton of em­ploy­ees, that kind of freaks me out. ‘Cause my whole sys­tem is I go in, I pick out a bunch of things, and, if I can — at Ur­ban they count them out but at Top Shop they ask, so you just lie and tell them you have a low­er amount — if I can con­ceal stuff just so that my num­ber is low­er, in case I came out and they want­ed to match up num­bers. But nor­mal­ly, I re­move the tags in the fit­ting room and stuff it in my bag and on my per­son, then bunch all the hang­ers up, put dou­ble hang­ers on dress­es and just make it look nor­mal, and if they ask me, just say I’m think­ing about it. And then put them all away ei­ther fast or while I’m still shop­ping around and then leave. But if no one’s in there shop­ping, they’re like, “This girl’s tried on all this stuff and then went and put each and every sin­gle one back?” And al­so, I’ll get a big coat to try on to put all the tags and stuff in and put that back on the floor. So if they did think I was weird and went and checked that coat, then they’d know what was up.

Top Shop, $350

What’re the eas­i­est places to steal from?
Um, Ur­ban’s tags are re­al­ly re­al­ly easy to get off. But they pay more at­ten­tion in the fit­ting rooms, so that’s kind of an­noy­ing. It re­al­ly just de­pends. Top Shop is re­al­ly easy when it’s busy just ‘cause no­body’s look­ing at you. But my friend who works at Ur­ban eats for free at Dean and Delu­ca every day. He just steals his lunch every day from Dean and Delu­ca. I’ve done it a cou­ple of times.

From the same Dean and Delu­ca?
Yeah, the same one. So they re­al­ly don’t give a fuck. He gets a drink, sushi.

Does he just walk out with it with­out even con­sid­er­ing?
He walks in with his coat over his arm, picks it up and then walks back out.

When you said tag, do you mean the pa­per tags? What hap­pens if you come across a met­al con­trap­tion?
Yeah, there’s the hard tag where there’s a pin and a big piece of plas­tic, and the pin goes in­to the plas­tic and locks. Work­ing at An­thro­polo­gie for a long time, there’s a big mag­net glued to the desk and you’d re­move the sen­sors with that…. So I was like, I need a re­al­ly big mag­net. Now I was like, I’m get­ting kind of crazy, I don’t know if I should do this. But I was like fuck it, I want a big mag­net. So I or­dered a big mag­net on eBay. I did a lit­tle bit of re­search to make sure that it would be strong enough and it fi­nal­ly got here and I took it out. I took it to Top Shop first and it was re­al­ly hard with theirs. I can’t even get it out some­times. But I’ve got­ten most of the stuff I’ve tried to steal from there.

Mag­net used to re­move sen­sors from cloth­ing

With the mag­net?
With the mag­net. But a lot of their stuff isn’t tagged too. I think they just get lazy when they’re putting it back on the floor or some­thing be­cause I found a lot of stuff with­out tags there too, so that makes it a lit­tle eas­i­er.

What were you look­ing for when you found the ma­genet? Like, what spec­i­fi­ca­tions does the mag­net have to be?
I saw a YouTube video. I could on­ly find one video of some­one do­ing it. ‘Cause there’s all these in­struc­tion­al videos on YouTube on how to get mag­nets off and they’re all re­al­ly stu­pid and long and bor­ing, and then this guy just threw it against the mag­net and it popped off. And I was like, I need that one! So I think some­where in the com­ments on it some­one men­tioned what kind of mag­net you would need. So I looked it up.[Au­thor's Note: Jane lat­er ex­plained her mag­net was grade N52.] At Top Shop, I have to work it un­til I get it a lit­tle out and then just pull it un­til it pops, which is an­noy­ing.

So what do you do if you leave the fit­ting room and, let’s say you al­ready have some­thing in your bag, but you know guards are on to you?
With­out beel­in­ing it to the door like you’re guilty and you know they’re on to you, just slow­ly and as ca­su­al­ly as pos­si­ble get out of there. Don’t give them a chance to come up and talk to you. The sec­ond you feel weird or un­com­fort­able or some­one’s look­ing at you, you want to get out of there. Keep your head down. If you have head­phones, that’s even bet­ter. Put your head­phones on so it seems like you’re not even pay­ing at­ten­tion be­cause if you do set the door off, they’ll be like — some places don’t even care; Uniq­lo won’t stop any­one if the door goes off — but at An­thro­polo­gie they’re re­al­ly se­ri­ous about it. And Top Shop has a guard, al­though he seems re­al­ly lazy to me. But at An­thro­polo­gie the guys take it re­al­ly, re­al­ly se­ri­ous­ly. Hav­ing worked at one here, I know that they have dif­fer­ent boss­es and their job is to make sure that they stop you. But if the door goes off, you have to keep walk­ing. Don’t stop, don’t pause, don’t look back. If you don’t have head­phones on and you keep walk­ing with­out even re­act­ing at all, they’ll know you stole some­thing just be­cause any nor­mal per­son would at least be like, “Uh?” But the sec­ond you’re out the door, they can’t go out there. I mean, they can come out and yell at you and tell you to come back in and stuff, but they can’t phys­i­cal­ly touch you and bring you back in the store.

Is that a le­gal is­sue?
It’s as­sault, I think. I know that’s how it is in Mass­a­chu­setts and I’m pret­ty sure it’d be the same here. They’re not bounc­ers, they can’t run out and tack­le you to the ground or ar­rest you on the spot. Al­though I did see one girl with bad tim­ing: She ran out and there was a cop just dri­ving re­al­ly slow by. But un­der all oth­er cir­cum­stances, if you set the door off, keep walk­ing and act com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous. Don’t run, just walk away and get out of sight.

Ur­ban Out­fit­ters, $298

What are some pro-tips for peo­ple who just start­ed steal­ing?
There could be a tag on every­thing. So many peo­ple get bust­ed at Ur­ban be­cause it doesn’t oc­cur to them that those pa­pers, those white card­board things are an alarm. So be aware of every­thing that’s on it. And be re­al­ly re­al­ly re­al­ly care­ful. Start small. And just be aware of your sur­round­ings. And know, most im­por­tant­ly, know that you just need to get out of there. Nev­er stop, nev­er make an ex­cuse, nev­er give any­one the chance to con­front you.

-ARV
Twitter.​com/​ToImpale

SI­MUL­TA­NE­OUS­LY POST­ED ON STREET CAR­NAGE.