Colorado Organized Retail Crime Alliance
COORCA is a statewide criminal investigative partnership between law enforcement and retail loss prevention specialists. COORCA acts as an intelligence hub -a partnership sharing cross-jurisdictional information to identify, disrupt, and apprehend organized retail crime (ORC) groups and criminal enterprises. Based on this proven approach, the network is able to communicate activity in real-time and helps reduce crime that affects merchants, businesses, and consumers.
What is Organized Retail Crime?
ORC is defined as the Theft/Fraud activity conducted with the intent to convert illegally obtained merchandise, cargo, cash, or cash equivalent into financial gain (no personal use), where/when the following elements are present:
Theft/Fraud is conducted
over multiple occurrences
and/or in multiple stores
and/or in multiple jurisdictions
by two or more persons, or an individual acting in dual roles (booster & fence)
Groups, gangs and sometimes individuals are engaged in illegally obtaining merchandise through both theft and fraud in substantial quantities as part of a criminal enterprise. These crime rings generally consist of "boosters" - who methodically steal merchandise from retail stores - and fence operators who convert the product to cash or drugs as part of the criminal enterprise. Sophisticated criminals have even found ways to switch UPC bar codes on merchandise, so they ring up differently at checkout, commonly called “ticket switching.” Others use stolen or cloned credit cards to obtain merchandise or produce fictitious receipts to return products back to retail stores.
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COORCA is a 501c3 Non-Profit Organization.