This course will provide law enforcement officers with the understanding and tools needed to tackle the current trends of retail theft rings and street level gangs operating as criminal enterprises.

You will be provided with the investigative tools to recognize the key elements of organized criminal enterprises to include retail theft rings, identity theft schemes, credit card fraud, counterfeit check rings and counterfeit merchandise. These schemes allow these organized criminal enterprises to obtain illegal proceeds to fund the operations of their organizations.

We will discuss the methods, including hands on analysis, utilized to obtain stolen merchandise, utilizing the black market, pawn shops and online marketplaces to convert the merchandise to currency that is then integrated into our financial system to launder the illegal proceeds. You will learn how to build criminal and financial profiles that will allow you to link all levels of the organization together and build the probable cause to shut down and prosecute these criminal organizations.

This training will allow the patrol officer and detectives to obtain the foundation needed to detect and collect the evidence necessary to link suspects to criminal organizations, especially retail theft rings, and to utilize the smaller players to advance your investigation to the higher levels of the organized criminal enterprises.