'Mafia-style' organised gang behind £73,000 worth stolen goods

A gang of shoplifters, responsible for the theft of at least £73,000 worth of champagne and other luxury goods, runs professional "mafia-style" operation like a serious business, state a recent report.

Dubbed as "champagne gang" by National Business Crime Solution (NBCS), an organisation which works with 100 businesses to tackle retail crime, the gang originates from Romania and is said to be responsible for 60 shoplifting incidents across the UK - from Gateshead to Bournemouth.

The reports detailed how during the heists, the gang members wear blue tooth headsets to communicate and warn each other if security guards are watching them. They operate on similar models- one member will casually walk down alcohol aisle scanning bottles while the other member deliberately set off the security alarm to distract staff.

Other members make the best of the confusion and simply walk out of the store with their stolen goods.

“It’s like a mafia-style operation. It’s run like a business,” Sarah Bird from NBCS told BBC. “They travel to a specific place, they have a shopping list of things they need to steal. They steal the goods and get a day rate."

The criminals have been dubbed “the champagne gang” by the organisation, as it is the main item they have focused on stealing.

The gang “took full advantage” of a champagne shortage in mainland Europe 18 months ago, said Bird, caused by a post-Covid surge in demand and the failure of some crops. The group has a clear hierarchy with people at the top who instruct, she says, and a stream of employees who get paid, she added.

They came onto the NBCS’s radar in early 2023, but have since started swiping other types of alcohol and meat to serve a new demand. The group changes tactics when new technology comes into the market that might impact their operation.

“They were originally using trolleys to take goods out the stores. However, retailers invested in trolley wheel technology to stop the trolleys at certain points in the stores," Bird said. “So they’ve started to now use baskets and bags to remove the goods.”

NBCS added that the gang members usually take a major portion of stolen goods back to Romania to sell in the black market. Intelligence, including from Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras, suggests the gang’s vehicles drive to Europe with the goods inside.

The NBCS is tracking 63 organised criminal groups across the UK who have stolen at least £2.4m of goods in five years, states the report. Of these, 26 groups originate from the UK and Ireland and the rest predominantly from Eastern European countries.

This comes amid reports that organised shoplifting gangs are behind the rapid rise in retail crime.

Meanwhile, the past year has seen more information sharing between forces, in the form of Project Pegasus, in the National Police Chief Council (NPCC), which is focused on serious organised shoplifting. A total of 60 arrests have been made under the operation in four months.