The National Retail Federation (NRF) retracted a frequently cited statistic on the impact of organized retail crime, citing the realized difficulty in quantifying that data. Still, retailers have been hurt by these crimes characterized as widespread retail theft or inventory shrink, causing Congress to step in and hold a hearing Tuesday afternoon on the subject.

Home Depot VP of Asset Protection (HD) Scott Glenn, who will be testifying, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the issue and what the hearing plans to address.

"What we are seeing is that the problem continues to grow, it's putting pressure on us year-over-year, and we are investing to prevent a problem, and we wouldn’t invest to prevent that problem if we didn't see affecting us day in and day out," Glenn explains. "I appreciate the retraction but that's not really what we rely on to make business decisions."

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Video Transcript

- Talk to me about the data point that you're bringing to Congress today because going back to that NRF change in statistics saying that nearly half of the industry's missing merchandise in 2021 was the result of organized theft, but that number is looking like it was more likely closer to 5%. That's obviously a huge change. So what data point are you citing to support the idea that organized retail crime is leading to a necessary increase in retail theft?

SCOTT GLENN: Yeah. So NRF and our third-party partners are helpful, but they're not-- they're not what we rely on. We rely on our own internal data, and our own trajectory, and what we're seeing in our stores every day. And so you know, what we are seeing is that the problem continues to grow. It's putting pressure on us year over year. And we are investing to prevent a problem, and we wouldn't invest to prevent that problem if we didn't see it affecting us day in and day out. So I appreciate the retraction, but that's not really what we rely on to make our business decisions.

JARED BLIKRE: Scott-- excuse me, Scott, big-picture question here. When I think organized crime, I think of the mafia, and in order to battle these forces decades ago, we passed RICO laws in the United States, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. How is this not-- how is this not able to tackle the current problems, and do you think this legislation is really what's needed to enable the federal authorities to crack down on this? Does it enable you, guys? I guess bottom line what I'm asking is what's different about this particular act?

SCOTT GLENN: Listen at the structural level having at the bottom of the pyramid boosters and folks that are out there committing the crimes on a daily basis and then working those upwards to the leadership of these organizations, they're not that different. But what I would tell you is there's a patchwork of local, state laws out there and they vary by jurisdiction.

We've been working very closely with many attorneys general who have established task forces to address this. Some of them use RICO laws to address this type of problem within their particular states. Ultimately, what we're looking for is that federal level when an attorney general is kind of barred from going outside of their state and aggregating upwards where complexity and the breadth and scale of some of these crimes warrant some type of federal action.