A shopkeeper has revealed how he turned detective to track down a shoplifter after discovering goods stolen from his business for sale online.
Charlie Groves, who runs a garden centre in Bridport, Dorset, says he watched CCTV recordings of a woman concealing Jellycat toys in a pram carrying her child, before leaving the store without paying and getting into her car.
Mr Groves says he was able to piece together the woman’s identity by scouring resale websites, deciphering her car’s personalised number plate, and eventually finding her Facebook profile.
When he traced a seller on Vinted he suspected of selling on the stolen goods, Mr Groves discovered the man the account belonged to is married to the woman who had shoplifted the cuddly toys.
The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) advises online shoppers to think carefully about whether something which appears to be a bargain is “too good to be true”.
Vinted says it is “constantly mobilised to detect and counter new malicious behaviour”, and reviews and improves processes when needed.
After realising a large Jellycat hedgehog toy worth £59 was missing from his garden centre shop in October, Charlie Groves decided to look for answers by scouring the store’s CCTV recordings.
At one point, he saw a woman taking one of the stuffed toys from the shelves and handing it to her child to pacify them, before picking up one of the largest items on display and stuffing it into the bottom of her pram.
Security cameras also captured the woman in the garden centre car park, driving a car with a personalised number plate that appeared to reference a woman’s name.
In the days after the theft Mr Groves went online and found a Jellycat hedgehog like the one stolen from him being sold on resale site Vinted.
“It’s heartbreaking to find these things you’ve been displaying being sold online,” he told the BBC.
Mr Groves tracked down the Vinted account owner on Facebook and discovered he was married to a woman who looked like the same person he’d seen on the Groves Garden Centre CCTV footage stealing toys. The woman’s name on Facebook was very similar to the personalised number plate on the shoplifter’s car.
Mr Groves estimates the woman may have stolen eight Jellycats worth up to £400 from his shop that day. He says he has passed the information he gathered about the theft and resale of the stuffed animals to the police.
Dorset Police told the BBC enquiries into the incident are ongoing and no arrests have been made.
“It’s quite frustrating,” Mr Groves says, “you do all this work – track them down – but you don’t get anything back.
“It would be good to have at least a deterrent to stop people coming in and being quite so brazen. It happens because the people doing the shoplifting know nothing is going to happen.”
The BBC tracked down the woman seen shoplifting in the CCTV footage to Bristol. She confirmed she is the owner of the vehicle seen in the store’s CCTV, but denied being involved in shoplifting cuddly toys from Groves Garden Centre to sell online.
The woman’s husband denies knowing any stolen items were being advertised for sale on his Vinted account.
At another garden centre in Horsham, Sussex, Jellycat toys were also regularly being stolen and staff now display them in glass cabinets to prevent further thefts.
Old Barn Garden Centre’s head of security, Chris Hoare, believes proofs of purchase should be a requirement for people selling goods through online marketplaces.
“They need to have an accountability for how this stuff is resold on their sites,” Mr Hoare says.
Without that, he adds, online marketplaces are “part of the problem, rather than part of the solution”.
Shoplifting is at record levels with 469,788 offences recorded in England and Wales in the year to June 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The Centre for Retail Research has estimated shoplifting adds £133 onto the cost of an average UK household’s shopping bill each year.
Retail trade bodies warn stolen goods being sold through online marketplaces like Vinted, eBay and Facebook Marketplace are a growing problem – which is helping fuel an increase in shoplifting
The British Independent Retailers Association (BIRA) estimates at least three in five items shoplifted from its members end up being sold online.
“The industrial scale of this is worrying and is definitely fuelled by the availability and expediency and lack of control in online marketplaces,” BIRA’s chief executive Andrew Goodacre says.
The NPCC told the BBC it wants owners of online marketplaces to take more steps to ensure people are unable to sell goods through their sites anonymously, and it would support the introduction of new laws to force platforms to verify a seller’s identity. The NPCC also advises bargain-hunting online shoppers to be cautious.
“If you see something that is a huge reduction or is cheaper than you could buy it in your local store then you’ve got to be questioning to yourself,” says Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman. “Think about what you’re doing and who you’re purchasing off. If you’re unsure report it to us and let us know.”
Facebook, eBay and Vinted told the BBC it is prohibited to sell stolen items on their platforms – and they work closely with law enforcement to support investigations.
The Home Office told the BBC it will continue to work with police to understand the routes used to sell stolen goods. It also said it would work with online marketplaces to inform what more can be done to tackle the stolen goods market.
In the run up to Christmas, Charlie Groves says shoplifting remains a “massive problem” for his Dorset garden centre business, when gift-related items can easily be sold online.
“It’s not the back of van anymore.”
Additional reporting by Leigh Boobyer and Dan Ayers.
