Sponsors (44)
Introduced April 10, 2025 by Charles Ernest Grassley · Last progress April 10, 2025
The bill centralizes and strengthens federal tools and coordination to combat organized retail and supply‑chain theft—likely improving enforcement, reducing theft, and aiding businesses and consumers—but it expands federal enforcement, forfeiture, and information‑sharing in ways that raise civil‑liberties, privacy, jurisdictional, and taxpayer‑cost risks.
Retailers, transportation companies, and law enforcement will gain stronger federal investigative and prosecutorial tools plus a centralized coordination center to disrupt organized retail and supply‑chain crime.
Financial institutions and law enforcement can detect, block, and pursue proceeds of illicit transactions more effectively because anti‑money‑laundering coverage is expanded to include prepaid/gift cards and additional predicate offenses for forfeiture.
State, local, Tribal, and territorial law enforcement will receive coordinated federal support (grants, training, technical assistance, and information-sharing) to investigate and respond to large‑scale theft and cargo diversion.
Defendants and individuals face increased risk of overcriminalization and more prosecutions/penalties because the bill expands federal criminal tools and penalties tied to organized retail and supply‑chain theft.
Taxpayers will bear new federal costs to create and operate the Center and to fund expanded enforcement and grant programs, and those costs could divert funds from other priorities.
Expanded forfeiture eligibility tied to added predicate offenses could increase asset seizures, imposing legal and financial burdens on defendants and taxpayers who may need to contest seizures.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Expands federal criminal and forfeiture tools for organized retail and supply‑chain theft and creates a DHS‑led national coordination center for investigations and information sharing.
Creates a new federal law enforcement coordination center and changes several federal criminal statutes to strengthen tools against organized retail and supply‑chain theft. It broadens money‑laundering definitions to explicitly cover prepaid and gift cards, adds certain interstate‑commerce theft/transport/sale offenses to lists used for forfeiture and related prosecutions, and directs the Department of Homeland Security to stand up an Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center within 90 days to coordinate investigations, share information with state/local agencies and private sector partners, track trends, and provide training and technical assistance. The measures aim to improve federal coordination of multi‑jurisdictional and transnational retail theft networks, facilitate information sharing between government and businesses, and expand prosecutorial and forfeiture tools available to disrupt organized retail crime and cargo theft. The text does not specify dedicated appropriations or detailed funding mechanisms for the new Center.