The Current - How Police Busted a Lululemon Theft Ring

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Yoga pants and stolen goods. Court documents obtained by CBC reveal a suspected organized crime ring behind a wave of high-value thefts from Lululemon stores across British Columbia. CBC journalist Jason Proctor breaks down how police tracked down the suspects.

1942, Europe. Soldiers find a boy surviving alone in the woods. They make him a member of Hitler's army. But what no one would know for decades, he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true? I'm Dan Goldberg. I'm from CBC's personally, Toy Soldier. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Their whole brand, it's like a luxury. It's also a status symbol. You own kind of one

or two items just to prove that, yeah, I have a Lululemon. It's kind of become a uniform of mine, especially since COVID when work dress codes have been a bit more relaxed. Essentially, now my entire wardrobe is Lululemon. Lots of people want Lululemon these days. As you just heard from some of the customers on the streets of Toronto, the brand is world famous for its yoga pants and pricey athletic leisure wear, so popular that the brand has become the target of shoplifters. For years, thieves have strolled

into stores, browsed the aisles, then ripped clothes right off the racks, dashing out of the store with arms full of stolen goods worth thousands of dollars. It turns out some of these seemingly random thefts might not be so random. CBC News has obtained documents suggesting there is a coordinated effort from a suspected multi-level organized crime ring in British Columbia targeting Lululemon stores. Our CBC News investigative reporter Jason Proctor has been looking into the story. He joins us from Vancouver. Good morning.

Hello, Susan. This sounds pretty sophisticated, Jason. So put it together for us. Where does this investigation begin? Okay, so it begins last November when RCMP in Surrey start following somebody who's suspected of being a prolific thief, this guy named Min Nokta. And what happens is over the course of about a week and a half around the Christmas period, so obviously intensely busy shopping period, this guy allegedly makes a series of thefts

day after day from Lululemons in a variety of municipalities throughout Greater Vancouver. And I mean, to give you an example of the frequency, there's a mall in Surrey here, where he hit Morgan Crossing Mall, the Lululemon store there, allegedly five times in the space of a week, right? So the RCMP are following him as he does this. And then what they notice is because they also get production records for his phone. And so they kind of notice a curious pattern, which is that immediately before and after these thefts, his phone is allegedly making contact with the phone of somebody else who has popped up in a previous shoplifting investigation

connected to Lululemon. And so they kind of start putting some dots together with regards to these because they figure that he is taking orders ahead of these robberies for the items to steal. Jason, why were they tracking him initially in that December period? Well, so basically this is one of these response teams within communities like Surrey, like other places where you know a small number of people are believed to be responsible for a large number of the the sort of thefts that happen. So basically they're sort of you know following this one guy and as I say they kind of noticed that he's made contact with a phone

belonging to somebody from this earlier transit investigation, which gained a lot of headlines last summer when it happened. So what type of operation were the thieves running? I mean, how did it work? And what was this connection with another phone? Yeah, so the other phone belongs to one of two men who were charged last year following a raid by Transit Police here that ultimately saw the seizure of about $100,000 worth of stolen Lululemon's goods.

And that's at that point that Transit Police first kind of started talking about a theft ring. So basically, once they kind of make this connection, the RCMP decide to go back and look through the Transit Police files at this. And what they see is that these two guys were allegedly making contact with prolific shoplifters throughout the Lower Mainland and ahead of robberies they were allegedly ordering, you know, what they wanted.

They were haggling with, you know, prolific thieves, including actually a couple that have kind of matching his and hers bands from Lululemons anywhere in BC, ordering what they wanted. There are WhatsApp messages where one of these accused guys was allegedly sending shoplifters pictures sent from the Lululemon website to say basically we need more of this, we need more of that, less of this. They also notice all of these connections with shoplifters who obviously have very often large and long criminal records. This same guy is making contact after that with a woman in Surrey who has no criminal

record but judging from the WhatsApp messages that they get, they figure she has some kind of a sophisticated knowledge of the market for these goods, and actually perhaps an international market too, because she's sort of saying to this guy, well look, the Lululemon pants you got me, those aren't selling, I don't want any of those more. I want these colors.

That sounds crazy. I mean, essentially, personal shopping without paying. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, essentially. And so what happens then is the RCMP say, okay, we've got this guy we've been following, right? We have somebody who we suspect is putting in orders and, you know, fencing the goods for him. So let's now turn to that woman who was identified in the previous investigation. And let's find out whether, in fact, the middleman is turning to her again, perhaps allegedly to fence these stolen goods. And so what they do is they talk to Lululemon's asset protection team. And this is kind of

interesting part of this too, because Lululemon has a large division of people whose sole reason for existence is essentially to stop shoplifting and to track down stolen goods. So they set the RCMP up with these kind of wands, I guess you would basically call them. Like they work on a sort of a radio frequency identification technology. And what they pick up is information that is put wirelessly into these tags that are put on Lululemon clothing when it's in the store, right? So let me just step that back a bit because this is kind of interesting.

So Lululemon has detectives, they're now called asset protection workers, and they have put some kind of tag in the clothing that can be read by a scanner. Yeah, exactly. And so basically it contains all kinds of information about the clothing, including whether it should still be on the shop floor or whether it's ever left legitimately, right? But how does a scanner work if you can't find the goods? Basically, what you do is the tag will still work. It will still transmit that information to the scanner. It's just finding wherever the stolen goods are.

So what the RCMP do is take one of these wands, allegedly, and they go and stand outside the woman's house and on a neighboring property. And again, this is all contained within the terms of the search warrant. They point it at the property and they pick up 18 hints for items of clothing that were still supposed to be in Lululemon stores in a variety of places. Wild. So they're standing in the bushes somewhere, pointing the wand,

and they can tell that they believe that these tags are on clothes that are in this house. Exactly. And so based on that information, they obtain a search warrant for the woman's home, and they go in to seize what they say are hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of goods. And so they've since, the province just last month has filed a civil forfeiture suit against this woman and her husband, actually, because they allege that, you know, for instance, their mortgage and their car is paid for through the proceeds of crime in the form of these goods. And I mean, as part of the search warrant process, the police return a list of all the goods that they seized. And I mean, you know, there's a couple of dozen pages worth of a listing of things, including multiple lululemon items, multiple cosmetic items, $5,000 of cash found allegedly in the woman's glove box. And so as I say, they're

sort of suing to keep all that. If you want to hear daily news that doesn't hurt your soul and might even be good for your soul, check out As It Happens. I'm Chris Howden. And I'm Niel Koxal. Every day we reach people at the center of the most extraordinary stories, like the doctor who restored a patient's eyesight with a tooth or a musician in an orchestra that plays instruments made out of vegetables. Take the scenic route through the day's news with As It Happens and you can find us wherever you get your podcasts.

So civil forfeiture, why not a criminal charge against the woman or the couple? Well that we don't know at this point. Very often what happens here in British Columbia, and there's all kinds of different reasons, is there's often sort of a delay between when a search is done, when things are sort of seized, as they go through the process of putting together a case to put before Crown, who will ultimately decide on whether charges are coming. For instance, last summer, when the Transit Police had the sort of first announcement

around, you know, arrests with regards to this, you know, ring of people, they announced that, you know, there had been arrests, but there were no charges. Those didn't actually happen until around October. Interesting to note as well, I mean, according to this search warrant, one of those men that was charged, even after he'd been charged and was beginning to go through the court process, was also, you know, allegedly making contact with this thief. Jason, I'm going to get back to the investigation in a second, but why were they taking Lululemon and not, you know, high-end luxury goods like Louis Vuitton or something like that, which command a premium price?

I mean, hard to say. I think obviously those things come up as well in the course of shoplifting. You know, it's interesting because some of the people here have, you know, numerous no-go bands. So basically, you can't go to Lululemon, you can't go to Eritrea, you can't go to Bass Pro Shop. But I think what we see here, because it has come up repeatedly and if you look across North America, there have been other sort of rings of people targeting Lululemon. It is, as you heard sort of the people you spoke to,

such a status symbol. It's such a successful company. The clothes are quality clothes. You know, it's a target. We actually want to hear a little bit more from people. We asked people on the street to shop at Lululemon and what they thought about these thefts. So have a listen. I was just at the drug store the other day and people ran out with a bunch of stuff. So it seems like people can't afford stuff or they want to resell it and make money with it. So I'm not surprised.

There's even like a guy in our neighborhood that has like Lulu sales on his lawn. It's Aritzia, Lulu and so I have no idea how he's getting hold of this stuff. Yeah, I see it a lot on different apps, websites like Depop, Facebook Marketplace, things like that. Well, I think it's really known for the label, not really the quality or the product, even though the quality is really good. So I think it's something easy to sell on like secondhand like Facebook Marketplace or something, especially if it's not used, you can get a lot of money for it. Wow. Well, there you go. People are noticing this kind of behavior. So getting back to the investigation you found out about, what's happening with any proceedings now?

Well, so basically, you know, there's a variety of different proceedings that are kind of ongoing in relation to this, because what you have is sort of everything operating at the various sort of, you know, levels of, you know, what obviously from sort of the outside appears to be this kind of multi-level organization. So you have those civil forfeiture proceedings, the woman has not responded to the lawsuit filed against her. You have this sort of middlemen, these two middlemen who are charged and that's sort of coming up for a preliminary inquiry in the coming months this summer. But, you know, who knows where that's going. You know, very street level, I obtained some of the recordings of the proceedings involving

some of these prolific shoplifters, because, you know, I was kind of curious about, you know, what happens at that level. And we see this kind of other issue reflected here, which is really this concern that British Columbians have raised about what they kind of call a revolving door bail system, which is this idea that very often someone's often kind of released, it appears to the public anyway, as soon as they're kind of arrested for something. And I mean, in the case of that, the guy that sparked this investigation, he's actually in custody now, but he was recently arrested after having been released, you know, at least four times by judges in relation to thefts and alleged thefts, you know, while he awaits trial.

The last one that I listened to, you know, he was released on sort of this promise, you know, that he was going to be getting treatment because many of these people have addiction problems and that's why they're shoplifting to begin with and going through this sort of level of crime. And, you know, basically, he was released on a promise to attend this treatment, and now he's accused of breaching those promises, and he's racked up, you know, 20 or so more. Interesting, I listened to another sentencing for a woman who pleaded guilty as part of this whole kind of thing, who was named in this warrant, to theft from Lululemon. And you know, she told the judge, she wanted to get out of the revolving

system. She'd been released many times before. The list against her list, you know, was this long list of, as you sort of mentioned at the top, running into Lululemon, stealing thousands of goods, often the same Lululemon on the same day, basically. Yeah, but, you know, she was dealing with these problems. She was kind of excited at that point to be going into treatment and you know that was last September sadly She's back behind bars now the judge said to her, you know, this is terrible Like she'd done a jail term by that point you released and within four days You committed the same crime and the judge says you you know, these are not the same crime and the judge says, you know, these are not victimless crimes. People work in these stores, people buy these clothes, there are customers here,

people own these stores, and I think that goes to the tape you just played, right? Which is people having Lululemon sales in their garden or Facebook marketplace where it's got value if it's never been used. Like, it is a bit of a too-good-to-be-true kind of thing. I mean, it's got to be coming from somewhere, right? Like, I know people, I'm a cyclist, I know people who, you know, have bought bikes or see bikes on Facebook Marketplace sometimes. And I mean, you know, somebody might be missing that bike, you're getting for an absolute bargain.

So almost like a truly a black market in full view. Yeah, very much, very much, very much. Just finally, how has Lululemon responded to this suggestion of a theft ring? Well, so Lululemon sent me a statement saying basically how seriously they take the issue of theft and that the issue of maintaining safe stores is obviously paramount to them because of the value of their customers. They also sort of specifically mentioned the various techniques like the sort of investigative techniques involving scanners and that kind of thing,

you know, that they say has actually contributed to a drop in, you know, retail theft in sort of the greater Vancouver area. So I don't know whether that is borne out by what police have seen. It's certainly not sort of the tenor of the investigation that was conducted by the RCMP. Danielle Pletka What a web of Lululemon thefts. Wow. Very interesting story, Jason. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Jason Proctor is a CBC News investigative reporter. He was in Vancouver. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.