A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on organized retail and cargo theft opened with Chairman Chuck Grassley describing a dramatic increase in organized, high-speed retail robberies and supply-chain attacks and urging Congress to act. "Some of the worst criminal organizations, including cartels, terrorists, and human traffickers use this type of crime," Grassley said.

The hearing focused on the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (referred to in testimony as CORCA or the combating organized retail crime act), a bipartisan bill that would create a national coordination center inside the Department of Homeland Security to collect intelligence, support multi-jurisdiction investigations and strengthen criminal penalties for organized retail and supply-chain theft. Ranking Member Dick Durbin and other senators pressed witnesses on enforcement, data gaps and whether DHS is the appropriate lead agency.

The witnesses included David J. Glawe, president and chief executive officer of the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB); Donna Lam, chief strategy officer of IMC Logistics; Scott McBride, chief global asset protection officer for American Eagle Outfitters; and Summer Stephan, district attorney of San Diego County and president of the National District Attorneys Association. Each described increasingly sophisticated criminal networks that exploit supply-chain vulnerabilities to steal, export and resell goods.

David J. Glawe said transnational criminal organizations treat theft as "big business" and stressed the need for public–private coordination. NICB provided statistics used in testimony, reporting more than 240 cargo-theft investigations in the past 18 months that aided law enforcement and more than 70 recoveries valued at nearly $40 million. Glawe said cargo theft rose 27% in 2024 and expected another 22% increase in 2025; other cited estimates placed annual cargo losses as high as $35 billion.

Donna Lam described rapid growth in incidents reported to her company, IMC Logistics, from 5 cargo-theft reports in 2021 to 876 in 2024 and gave multiple operational examples: train cars with slashed seals and cut air hoses, terminals breached by vehicles, and containers emptied in minutes. Lam said criminals sometimes use counterfeit driver IDs and fake placards to impersonate carriers and noted cases in which stolen goods were recovered in warehouses tied to cash-smuggling operations.

Scott McBride outlined how organized retail crime (ORC) uses businesslike structures—encrypted messaging, reverse logistics, illicit liquidation and gift-card manipulation—to move high volumes of stolen goods, including cross-border exfiltration. He credited Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) with helping recover nearly 2,000 pairs of apparel in one operation and said national coordination enabled discoveries of related criminal arms in multiple states.

Summer Stephan detailed prosecutions in San Diego and said local task forces had charged 218 defendants in two years, but that investigators often hit jurisdictional limits before reaching the "shot callers" who organize multi-state thefts. Stephan described multimillion-dollar jewelry heists and cross‑border fences, and argued federal coordination and tools such as criminal forfeiture were necessary to remove profits and leadership from criminal networks.

Senators questioned witnesses on several themes: the adequacy of current federal enforcement (Durbin criticized slow implementation of the Informed Consumers Act by the Federal Trade Commission), whether DHS or the Department of Justice is the right lead for a coordination center, and how to distinguish petty theft from organized networks. Senator John Cornyn and others emphasized the transnational aspect and links to cartels; Senator Mazie Hirono and Senator Amy Klobuchar raised data‑quality concerns and called for standardized incident reporting.

Witnesses and lawmakers also discussed existing legal tools. The transcript noted that Title 18 makes transporting stolen property valued at $5,000 or more in interstate or foreign commerce a federal crime and that aggregation of multiple thefts into a common scheme can reach that threshold. Several witnesses urged stronger asset-forfeiture authority and said RICO-style prosecutions and federal task forces have been effective when applicable.

No formal committee votes were recorded at the hearing; the session concluded with senators saying written questions would be submitted for the record. Chairman Grassley entered letters and statements from industry groups and trade associations into the record during opening remarks.

Why it matters: Witnesses and multiple senators portrayed organized retail and cargo theft as a rapidly growing, transnational problem that raises consumer costs, risks worker safety, damages supply-chain integrity and can finance other crimes. Proponents of the CORCA bill told the committee that a federal coordination center, stronger criminal penalties and improved public–private data sharing are essential to identify and dismantle networked criminal enterprises.

What’s next: Senators and witnesses agreed on the need for better national data, stronger enforcement and improved federal–state–local–private cooperation. Committee members said they would follow up with written questions and consider legislative changes; no further action was recorded in the transcript provided.