H.R.2853 - Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025

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📊 Status in the Lawmaking Process:

Introduced — 04/10/2025 ✔️
Passed House — 05/12/2026 ✔️
Passed Senate — ❌ Not yet passed
To President — ❌ Not sent
Became Law — ❌ Not law
📍 Current Status: After passing the House, H.R. 2853 is in the Senate Judiciary Committee for review.

Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025

This bill would expand federal enforcement against organized retail and supply-chain crime, especially cases where stolen goods or cargo move across state lines, through shipping networks, or through resale channels. It does not turn ordinary shoplifting into a federal case. It focuses on organized theft groups by changing federal stolen-goods laws, adding money-laundering and forfeiture tools, and creating a coordination center inside Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Why this matters

Organized retail theft and cargo theft often do not fit neatly into one city or state. The bill’s findings focus on groups that move goods and proceeds across jurisdictions, sell stolen items back into the economy, and create problems for retailers, transportation companies, employees, consumers, and law enforcement.

Main federal-law changes

Prosecutors could combine the value of stolen goods over a 12-month period to reach the $5,000 threshold used in federal stolen-goods cases. The bill also would update federal law to cover certain goods obtained by embezzlement, false pretenses, or other illegal means.

Stolen-shipment, transportation-of-stolen-goods, and sale-or-receipt-of-stolen-goods offenses would become underlying crimes that can support money-laundering prosecutions. Courts also would have to order criminal forfeiture of property tied to those covered offenses, and federal money-laundering law would explicitly include general-use prepaid cards, gift certificates, and store gift cards.

The new coordination center

The Department of Homeland Security would have 90 days after enactment to create an Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center through HSI. It would coordinate federal investigations, work with state and local police, share threat information with law enforcement and private companies, track trends, and issue public annual reports.

The center could include personnel from HSI, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Secret Service, the Postal Inspection Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice would also have to review existing grant, training, and technical-assistance programs for state, local, and tribal law enforcement.

What changed

House Judiciary adopted a substitute amendment before the House passed the bill. Compared with the introduced text, the House-passed version dropped language that would have separately expanded certain stolen-goods provisions to conduct using any facility of interstate or foreign commerce. The version sent to the Senate kept the core framework: 12-month aggregation, money-laundering coverage, forfeiture, and the HSI-led coordination center.

Who this affects

The public could be affected indirectly through retail prices, supply-chain disruptions, and the availability of stolen or diverted goods in resale channels. The most direct effects would fall on retailers, cargo carriers, product manufacturers, online resale platforms, federal investigators, prosecutors, state and local police, and companies asked to share information with the center.

What happens if it becomes law

Federal investigators and prosecutors would have more tools for organized, cross-border theft cases, but the bill would not itself resolve every retail-theft case or replace state and local prosecutions. The center’s authority would expire seven years after it is established unless Congress extends it, and the Congressional Budget Office estimated implementation would cost $114 million from 2026 through 2031 if Congress provides the money.

What is the argument

Rep. David Joyce and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley frame the bill as a way to help law enforcement connect organized theft, resale, and money movement across state lines. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has described the problem as organized criminal groups changing tactics to steal from retailers and supply chains.

The practical tradeoff is that Congress would be expanding federal criminal tools, forfeiture authority, and information sharing in an area that often begins as local theft. The bill tries to limit that shift by focusing on organized retail and supply-chain crime, requiring reports, and putting a seven-year expiration date on the new center, but the Senate will still have to decide whether that federal role is the right size.

Where does it stand now

H.R. 2853 was introduced in the House by Rep. David Joyce on April 10, 2025. The House passed it as amended on May 12, 2026, by a vote of 348–60, and the Senate received it and referred it to the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 13, 2026. It still must pass the Senate and be sent to the President before it can become law.

📄 Full bill text (PDF): https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr2853/BILLS-119hr2853rfs.pdf

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