FaceFirst + ROC: AI You Can Trust. Accuracy You Can Prove.

Gatekeeper Systems’ Strategic Partnership with ROC Adds Top-Ranked Facial Recognition Algorithm to Industry Leading FaceFirst Software

Foothill Ranch CA, December 3, 2025 — Gatekeeper Systems, a pioneer in intelligent theft prevention solutions, today announced a significant enhancement to its FaceFirst platform with the integration of technology from ROC. ROC is the #1 American provider of facial recognition and vision AI and trusted by the U.S. Department of Defense, numerous law enforcement agencies, and Fortune 500 companies.

FaceFirst’s ROC algorithm integration delivers a new level of accuracy, fairness, and operational trust to enterprise loss prevention programs. It helps retailers reduce false alerts, improve investigative efficiency, and strengthen risk mitigation without requiring new hardware or additional costs.

Read more in today's Vendor Spotlight column below
 

Ever-Changing ORC Groups
Retailers Reassess How They Track ORC as Criminal Tactics Continue to Evolve

By the D&D Daily staff

As organized retail crime (ORC) groups adapt to new loss-prevention controls, retailers are rethinking how they measure, classify, and respond to large-scale theft activity. Over the past year, several major retailers have shifted from a purely incident-count approach to broader behavioral analysis — a trend that is prompting a re-evaluation of what “organized theft” actually looks like in today’s environment.

According to multiple LP teams, traditional indicators such as booster bags, coordinated entry, and quick departure are still present, but groups are increasingly blending into normal shopping patterns. In many cases, ORC activity now involves smaller, more frequent thefts spread across wider geographic regions, making it harder to identify using legacy reporting models. The result is a growing need for data models that detect patterns over time rather than relying solely on individual event severity.

Teams also report that risk assessments now extend beyond in-store behaviors. Online marketplaces, store-to-store returns, curbside pickups, and ship-to-home fraud are being used to disguise the movement of stolen goods. Retailers are responding by integrating e-commerce loss trends with physical store intelligence to create a clearer picture of organized activity. Several AP leaders note that this integration often reveals connections that wouldn’t be visible within a single channel.

Partnerships with law enforcement remain crucial, but retailers are increasingly focusing on internal alignment first — ensuring that store teams, AP analysts, and e-commerce investigators are all using the same definitions of ORC. Consistent terminology is helping to prevent over-classification, which has been a challenge as teams strive to distinguish between habitual shoplifters and coordinated groups.

Across the industry, there is also a renewed emphasis on accuracy in ORC reporting. Some retailers are developing scorecards that weigh multiple variables: item type, quantity, suspect behavior, geographic patterning, and potential resale indicators. These structured profiles allow investigators to prioritize the most sophisticated groups without overstating isolated shoplifting incidents.

As ORC evolves, retailers are recognizing the need for more nuanced visibility — not just more data. The organizations that build integrated, cross-channel intelligence systems are positioning themselves to respond more effectively as organized theft tactics continue to shift.


Using AI to Fight ORC Groups
How AI Safeguards Retail Supply Chains from Organized Retail Crime

Online fraud and organized retail crime will continue to evolve. But so will the technologies designed to stop them.

When it comes to how organized retail crime (ORC) groups attack retailers, the battlefront has shifted online, where criminal networks exploit digital technicalities, manipulate e-commerce systems, and weaponize emerging technologies — often the same tech retailers use to protect themselves.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, U.S. consumers lost more than $12.5 billion to online fraud in 2024 — a 25% increase year-over-year. The Pew Research Center further found that nearly three-fourths of Americans have experienced an online scam. For retail supply chain executives, these numbers aren’t just consumer problems; they signal a widening threat to operational integrity, inventory accuracy, and brand trust.

Fraudsters evolve retail crime

In what’s a troubling turn of events for how retailers fight modern fraudsters, many online fraud rings now leverage AI to automate deception at scale. ORC teams use AI tools and photo-manipulation software to create fake receipts, false returns claims, and counterfeit documentation. These fraudsters can develop materials with alarming precision and within minutes with AI and other tools.

AI protects the retail supply chain

Where retailers can use AI to their advantage, loss prevention specialists, retail associates, and supply chain managers can leverage unified, advanced analytics of all transactions happening across the organization. AI that’s embedded into the retailers’ omnichannel systems can help identify anomalies within the supply chain. With so much at stake, both online and in-store systems need to be in sync so AI can accurately monitor transactions and the supply chain.

For instance, AI-driven fraud prevention tools can scan billions of data points in real time — transactions, device fingerprints, behavioral patterns, and supply chain signals — to uncover unusual behaviors that are invisible to human analysts. Similarly, AI can review data provided by RFID tags on shipments and products to help track and monitor goods that have gone missing. sdcexec.com


Industry Support for Combating Organized Retail Crime Act
WSC strongly support swift passage of U.S. organized cargo and retail theft legislation

The World Shipping Council (WSC) has joined a broad coalition of 90 industry partners calling for quick passage of the bipartisan Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025.

A coalition letter of support outlining the need for and provisions of the bill is available on the WSC website.

Statement from Joe Kramek, President & CEO, World Shipping Council:

“Organized cargo and retail theft is costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year and undermining the security of the American supply chain. These are not isolated incidents — they are coordinated, cross-border operations that target every link in the logistics network, from factory to port to rail.

The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025 provides the comprehensive national response this problem demands. By creating an Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center, the bill will connect federal, state and local law enforcement with private-sector experts to share intelligence, coordinate investigations and dismantle the networks driving this surge in theft.

We strongly support swift passage of this legislation and look forward to working with our partners across government and industry to strengthen cargo security and protect the flow of goods that keeps America moving.”  worldshipping.org


Progressives Ditching LPRs?
Liberal towns backtrack on license plate trackers amid concerns about privacy — and Trump

Some officials argue the cameras themselves pose the bigger danger for their cities.

A nationwide license plate recognition system tasked with reducing crime is being ousted from communities across the country — forcing local officials to reckon with mounting fears of federal surveillance during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Public safety company Flock Safety has billed its surveillance systems as a program to root out criminal activity on local streets, with its cameras already installed in more than 6,000 municipalities nationally. But as Trump’s deportation campaign brought an increased, forceful presence of federal agents to states across the country, some local officials in predominantly liberal cities and towns now argue the cameras themselves pose the bigger danger for their cities, offering federal law enforcement a back door for tracking residents’ movements.

More than a dozen local governments across the country in states like Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Texas have suspended or paused their Flock systems in the past year, citing concerns that the data collected by the cameras could be shared with federal agencies — as Flock says it did briefly during the summer through a since-terminated pilot program with the Department of Homeland Security. politico.com


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