LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 222 Ft. Esther Alcaraz

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

In this episode of the LPRC CrimeScience Podcast, Cory Lowe PhD, talks with Esther Alcaraz of Alto Alliance about how law, community, and innovation come together to fight organized retail crime. Hear how Alto supports retailers and prosecutors, builds safer stores, and partners with the LPRC to turn research into real-world impact.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to crime science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners as well as other professionals. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. My name is Corey Lowe. I'm the director of research here at the OPRC, and welcome to crime science podcast. Today, I am joined by Esther Alcraz from Alto. Esther, welcome.

Hi, thank you, Corey. thank you for having us. It is very good to have you. We've been doing a lot of work together for a few years now in partnership between Alto and the LPRC. I think a critical partner of ours. But for those who don't know, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do and what Alto does? Yeah, definitely. So again, my name is Esther Alcaraz. I am an attorney by profession graduated in 2011 for, from St. Thomas University down in Miami, and I was a prosecutor in the Miami State Attorney's Office, and then I was a defense attorney in Miami State Attorney for 10 years. During that time, I also became an adjunct professor with Miami Day College in St. Thomas University

as kind of a way to give back to the community since I was defending the criminals of Miami, essentially. And then in 2022, joined Alto as a staff attorney in Miami, Miami with our emerging clients down there and moved over to the growth development and business sales side over a year ago, kind of getting the word out about Alto and trying to motivate, you know, retailers to join the alliance and basically give back to the community. And also is essentially an asset protection retail partner where a vendor that assist in making sure that the cases get prosecuted through the system in an effective way where consequences that are

favorable to our clients, favorable to the community are achieved. And so we team up with retailers. We team up with different members of the community, government agencies, prosecutors' office, law enforcement agencies to kind of achieve meaningful results for anything that impacts business, any types of disruption, most commonly retail theft, but even violent crimes as well. Yeah, attorney by profession, good person by nature. There you go. It's very good to have you. So I think you mentioned it in your explanation just now, but there's a lot of legal support that you'll provide to retailers that goes beyond what you might normally expect from a law firm working with a retail company on legal issues.

I think that the way we frame it in the work that we're doing is that a lot of these retailers are spending just a ton. of money on solutions, but then things start to fall apart toward the end, right? When you need prosecution, you need that follow-up, that doesn't always occur. So can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like? So if a retailer, say, has an ORC offender who is hitting a lot of the stores in an area, how would you all step in and support the store teams and ORC investigators, LP in that case. Yeah, definitely.

So as you mentioned, a lot of the retailers have kind of robust investigations. They're able to identify, maybe an ORC person. Maybe they're able to identify as somebody that's hitting multiple stores. They get the case turned over to the police. Police are able to ID and make an arrest. And their case kind of concludes there. We kind of take over at that post-arrest through conviction cycle because we know that most retailers do not have the bandwidth to support the legal process.

Okay, so our legal team throughout the United States, they're mostly come from the prosecutor's office, in fact, we'll make sure that the case is effectively pushed through the system in that community. So arrest happens. We assure the prosecutor's office, this is a solid case, here's the evidence, here's my contact information, here's the investigator's contact information, let's make sure that this case comes to a conclusion the victim is on board we do not want this case to be dismissed what do you need and then we kind of have hold everybody accountable we show up to court we show up to

all um the important you know dates make sure that the judge is aware that the victim was on board that we want there to be some kind of conclusion on the case and these are the expectations and and again we kind of give visibility into all the processes to our retail partners so they know oh wow something is happening with the case all that work i did all that um investment like you were saying into those vendors that pre-arrest all of that is is going to achieve a meaningful result and hopefully give us that deterrence and especially in orc cases we can also kind of work on that pre-arrest with helping identify multiple cases that that person may be involved in so not just for that specific retailer but if they're a part of the larger alliance maybe that individual offender is

victimizing other stores are part of the alliance. Maybe we have information from another member of law enforcement that has kind of told us, hey, this person is responsible for this. They work with this group. They're giving the merchandise to this specific fence. And we kind of help link it up so creates a more robust case so that the prosecution has no choice but to move forward with that case. Fantastic. And ultimately, what you're aiming for is greater accountability.

And that could end up, you know, ultimately it's going to be involved some kind of corrections, but that could involve rehabilitation. It could be incarceration. It could be any of those things. Accountability comes in many forms depending on what's needed. How does that play into what y'all do at Alto? Yeah, I mean, that's a great shout out. Obviously, because you are in LPRC and you know what accountability looks like, you know,

the foundations of why somebody should be sentenced to something. it's not always going to be incarceration it's not always going to be incapacitation right every single individual case should be judged on the facts and then every single offender should have the appropriate sentence that will deter them and that's going to look different from person to person in case to case with that ORC person that has been doing this for years and this is their career that might look a certain way versus a first time offender versus somebody that has a drug abuse problem and alcohol abuse problem or somebody that needs mental health treatment. At all of the times,

the cases that we see, we won't kind of step on the toes of the prosecutor and be like, this is what needs to happen. We want something to happen. We want something formal to happen for a formal sanction to happen and for that accountability to be created, but we're going to trust the prosecutors

because that's their job, that's their responsibility, we're going to support them and then just advocate for the needs of our client. Ultimately, the client wants to make sure that they run a profitable, successful, and safe business. So whether that be in a stayaway order, whether that be, you know, advocating for that mental health treatment so that they don't continue to cause these interruptions, they will all, we are always going to support, you know, the safest community, the safest retail environment possible and making sure that the right appropriate people are incarcerated. Good deal. Yeah, I think that the distinction here is just the difference between results or

the lack thereof, right? Just the lack of follow-up in some cases. As you're working on these cases with retailers, what do you see as the greatest challenges to prosecution today? I think the biggest challenge to prosecution is the misconception that retail theft is a victimless crime and kind of making sure that the prosecutor's office don't come up with these policies that don't take into account the community. Because ultimately the community is paying for these victimless crimes. Okay, so making sure that there is showing up to court and kind of making, them understand that there's people involved in the cases, that there's retail workers that are impacted, the business is impacted, that this isn't just some random tax write-off is really important. And then once they kind of empathize with the circumstances, it's harder for them

to enforce policies of like, oh, dismissals. It's harder for them to enforce, oh, if it doesn't meet this threshold, we're just going to get rid of it. Like, no, if you don't take into account these smaller crimes it can turn into bigger crimes and we're not telling you to throw everybody in jail we're just telling you again there has to be some kind of formal sanction because it is a slippery slope

most definitely where do you see prosecutions are there are there is there are the shining areas of hope in terms of things changing for prosecutions

I mean, I'm obviously Florida born and raised, but I'll tell you, Florida is such an interesting place to see crime because people tend to think that you can get away with things in Florida, but you cannot. Florida takes crime very seriously. Even in Miami, which is the fourth largest prosecuting agency in the United States of America, it's hard to get a dismissal. they push it more towards a diversionary program they push more towards a mental health program there's a homeless program but all of these are formal sanctions where if the offender doesn't hold up their end of the bargain there's going to be a consequence and so i always tell especially when i'm talking to my retail partners even when i'm telling my students i think florida is going to be kind of a a model for how the rest of the united states runs their criminal justice system because it ends up being pretty effective. It's meeting the needs of the community and our community is saying we want this to be safe and we want these cases to be pushed through and we want, you know, people held responsible. This is not okay. You can't just run a muck in Florida. And so I always think it's really fascinating to see these trends and how they play out, you know, state to state and city to

city. Yeah, we actually did a study at the end of the last year, which really was a survey of at stores that were participants in Alto. I think there were some very positive results there. I want to go back to your point earlier about, you know, the impact that these offenders are having own communities. We talk about the victimist crime, but everyone kind of lives in the shadow of the other things that can happen during one of these theft incidents, right?

It's not always theft, and the employees who work in these stores may be afraid that that theft turns into a robbery or that theft turns into their last day on this earth. And that's just the reality that we live with. I've been thinking a lot about the burden of fear that people have. And we found that in those stores where Alto was present, at present, that the employees reported feeling safer with Alto,

particularly because of all of the follow-up. When we ask them why, yes, reduction in crime was one of those, but it's all about the things after the event. It's the support and prosecution. It's the strong relationship with law enforcement courts. It's the prosecution and tracking of repeat offenders. And it's the continuous support that the stores receive ultimately is what made a difference in that. Now, we've talked about quite a few things, including the research that we're doing together. I'm extremely enthusiastic about some of the projects that we have going on, and I'm hoping that this podcast is going to encourage some people

to reach out and to participate in one of the trials that we have going on. But, you know, at the end of the day, I just want to ask you, you know, what drove Alto to decide to come and partner with the LPRC and do research and share the findings with the retail community? well obviously you know it's a business and then they want to make sure that they're they're moving forward with that but why we really treasure our relationship with the LPRC is because it's motivated by making sure that people are educated into the differences that impact our community and I think we're kind of the same type of person Corey because ultimately like you said we're trying to be good people and do good for our community. We're trying to bring awareness to all these different

facets. And I think you hit the nail on the head where the safety of the employee working at the retail should be paramount. If you don't have the turnover, if you don't have people wanting to visit your stores, if you don't have your grandmother feeling safe when she's picking up a prescription, like where are we as a community? It's so unacceptable to see some of these things that happen. And having somebody like you and the LPRC that kind of see the bigger picture and understand why we need to figure out the best practices is so important to us. And it's not just about, you know, selling the hardware that will, you know, hard in the store. It's about these subjective things, the things that the people feel when they're shopping, the experiences, that the

retail employees feel when they're, you know, at the store trying to make a living is so important. And so making sure that everybody's educated on this and that we can collaborate together is paramount. Business is second, but I think that the collaboration and education is really important to Alto. And as a philosophy, because our founder from Chile, Jorge Nasar, was a prosecutor in Chile. It's just like the foundation of Alto. So we kind of build off of that and we try to really be strategic about the people we partner

up with. And obviously, LPRC and UF is just wonderful. partner and the more data that we can get with retailers on board, we can help push this message and educate everyone and kind of be aligned in this front together. Most definitely. I think another point to that safety message is a lot of people miss is that individual offenses are one thing, but oftentimes the people who are engaging in these repeat offending are not just involved in retail theft, right? There's a ton of studies showing those individuals who are committing crimes most frequently are

oftentimes also engaging in a very very wide variety of types of offenses and that's far beyond just theft so one of my goals here at the LPRC is objectives is to make sure that we are solving you know all the different crime types at once by ensuring that we're addressing the habitual and repeat offending that's occurring out there. You know, what are you excited about looking forward for Alto and everything you'll have going on? What is, what's in the future of Alto? I mean, we have a lot of, you know, clients that are hopefully onboarding in the next couple

months, but we're really excited about implementing kind of the changes in legislation that we've seen in the past couple years. We've talked about it before, but, you know, in 2022, there was a big change in the the ORC statute in Florida and kind of seeing the practice of it lately a couple weeks ago I saw a newscast with the Attorney General about a huge ORC infant formula case where this individual had $70,000 worth of infant formula theft like over 50 incidents, multiple retailers and the Attorney General made it clear that, you know, this kind of case should be taken seriously and in fact the sheriff the palm beach sheriff was quoted in it where this is not a

victimless crime because there's victims if when a mother goes to the store and there's no formula on the shelf that's you know there there's a victim to that and so seeing and there's up been other states i have kind of taken these legislative actions with the orc i'm i'm really excited to see how they use them for those repeat offenders and i think you hit the nail on the head too we're not just looking at retail theft as a single offender but this opportunistic offender right what other opportunities are they going to get their hands on and if this is the only way that we can stop them in utilizing the theft statute you may be preventing other opportunistic crimes okay is your car open when he's leaving the park or they're leaving the parking law are they going to the fence are they getting credit card information i mean this is the same type of offender that uses kind of opportunity of what's available and how quick can you they they get a turner on on it. Most definitely. And I mean, the infant formula cases are pretty tough because who knows whether that formula is being stored properly, you know, whether it's, you know, being tainted in some way.

There's just a thousand different ways that can go wrong. In terms of technology, you know, are there any tech partnerships you are developing, anything they are excited about on that side of things? So we do have a couple of integrations that we're hoping to build out. We have a great integration with ThinkLP, which is like a reporting software. We're working on hopefully getting an integration with Aurora. We've partnered with flock safety in the past. Obviously, having an abundance of additional investigative material is great to push these cases forward. But, you know, we really prize kind of the human component.

And so being able to, you know, partner up with. the law enforcement agencies, partner up with the prosecutors, partner up with the LPRC, I think is where we kind of find that we fit best, but it's 2025, so the technology is needed and it's available everywhere. Yes, yes, it is. But there's a lot of technology out. I think your point about people is, it rings true. You know, we have all these investigators out there, and that's a huge piece of the people part. But then we have a ton of technology, and that's been a huge focus for a while now, but I think at the end of the day, you do have to have that people part to make sure that someone's ushering these cases through the justice system. Now, we've talked

a lot about ORC, but there's other things that you've done with partners and some pretty big wins that you've had in areas where, say, homelessness and substance use problems that kind of run wild. How does Alto approach those types of issues with their retail partners? Yeah, definitely. So other types of the disruptions, specifically with like quality of life offenses, we will team up with community advocates. We'll team up with, you know, the landlords to make sure that everything is a safe, stable environment for the retail to thrive. In fact, on Thursday, we have a councilman meeting in Houston because there's been an encampment that's kind of been built right behind one of our retail partners. we want to make sure the councilmen, we want to make sure that they're aware of the issues that are in their community, right? And it's not just, okay, get them out of here.

We invite the councilman. We also invite the homeless advocacy group so they can have their one-on-one time with the individuals that have created that encampment and see if they need help. We don't want, like we said, we don't want people to just be taken away and treated unjustly or unfairly,

but sometimes the system is the only way to get them the help that they need and getting them connected to the advocacy group, getting them connected to people that can help them, maybe get them out of the drug cycle. We kind of push them all together and make sure that the councilman understands the needs of the community kind of in real time

because just sending an email isn't, you know, doesn't push the needle. Yeah, exactly. When they're there and they're seeing it. Yes. Makes all the difference in the world. Once again, that is absolutely. critical. So Esther, it's been a fantastic conversation today. I know if there's

curveballs at you, but I knew you could knock them out of the park. So thank you very much. It's always good working with you and our partners at Alto. So thank you. And thank you, everyone for listening to Crime Science Podcast. Once again, my name is Corey Lowe, I'm the director of research here. And we appreciate you joining us today. So thank you all. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast, presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at LPRsearch.org. The content provided in the crime science podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the crime science podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the loss prevention.

Research Council.