'Tis the Season to Be Wary

For most, Christmas is the season forgiving. But for a sizable substratum of society, it is a season for light-fingered taking. In the four weeks before Christmas, department stores suffer half their annual losses from shoplifting. Much of it is impulse stealing--the easiest to spot, because it is often done so clumsily, but the hardest to predict, because no segment of the population is immune. Only last week the Harvard Cooperative Society announced that it had caught 18 undergraduates shoplifting. Said Harvard Coop Manager John G. Morrill: "Everybody has the propensity to steal, and Harvard has its share of crooks."

Leggers & Muggers. The crooks that merchants fear most are the professionals, many of whom work for fences and steal selectively (current high-priority target: suede coats). Store detectives never cease to marvel at the professionals' ingenuity. Some have been known to take six dresses into a fitting room, emerge wearing all of them, one over the other, and march right out of the store. Others employ such traditional equipment as the "booster box"--a gift-wrapped package with a spring-loaded trap opening--or the "Harpo Marx" coat, a shapeless, voluminous outer garment that, inside, is a marvel of deep pockets and handy hooks.

Trickiest of the professionals are female shoplifters, known variously as "leggers," "knee huggers" and "crotch workers." Their technique consists of tucking stolen merchandise under their skirts and shuffling out of the store with the goods clutched between their thighs. By practicing at home with large telephone books, some have become so expert that they have made it right out the door leg-lugging men's suits, portable typewriters and small TV sets.

Play It Tough. For the gullible buyer, no sanctuary is safe. Hustlers are now working the office buildings, offering "French" perfume at cut-rate prices ("It was smuggled in, so no duty was paid"); predictably, the bargain scent smells of watered-down cologne. Across the U.S., homes are being flooded with cheap "personalized" ballpoint pens, ostensibly from a charity organization or a disabled veteran. The Post Office recently indicted one Florida operator who was sending out over 2,000,000 such pens, reaping a profit that may have run as high as $900,000 a year.

And for the men of the family, already wincing at the thought of Christmas ties to come, there is a foretaste in the garish $2 ties now being shipped round the country from St. Louis. "They are supposed to benefit the handicapped," says Atlanta Better Business Bureau Manager James W. Stephens. "But the people who are sending them define as handicapped anyone with less than 20-20 vision." What to do if unwanted and unordered goods arrive? Return them to the post office marked "Refused." If the merchandise is opened and lost or mislaid, Stephens still advises playing it tough. Says he: "When you get a bill, send it back with a letter saying, 'My storage fee for unsolicited merchandise is $500 a day. When you pay my bill, I'll pay yours!' " It works, Stephens says.

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