-moneyland.time.com
Here’s a crime trend that’s as equally bizarre as the rise in dog kidnappings,
though not as heart-wrenching: Thieves have increasingly been targeting
salons and beauty supply stores around the country to steal wigs and
weaves made with valuable hair imported from overseas. Stores are being
ripped off of tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise
in each human hair heist.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
reports that thieves in cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, San Diego,
Houston, and Chicago have been employing smash-and-grab techniques and
even ramming trucks into storefronts to steal high-end human hair. Hair
has become a hot target for criminals largely because hair—and the long
weaves, extensions, and wigs it’s used for—is hot among consumers, who
pay $100 and up per bundle to try and reproduce the look popularized by
reality star Kim Kardashian and others.
Thieves seem to know exactly what they are looking for: In an incident in Chicago, for example, a team of men made off with $70K to $90K worth of hair from a beauty supply store and didn’t bother touching the cash register at all.
Apparently, an illicit hair market has developed in many cities.
Salon owners say random vendors regularly stop in to try and sell their
merchandise. In many cases, only an expert would be able to tell whether
the hair is high-quality real deal, most of which is imported from
India and Malaysia, or shoddy synthetic material. It’s also nearly
impossible to tell whether the hair at hand was stolen.
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