Nike Supply Chain Woes: Police Recover $5M in Stolen Merchandise

The Los Angeles Police Department made an arrest on Saturday that captures a trend in recent years: the mass pilfering of Nike shoes.

Nike’s supply chain has been under attack at each stage and Saturday’s was the latest instance in Southern California, which has been a hot spot for shoe thievery. 

LAPD officers arrested 37-year-old Roy Lee Harvey Jr. after he was found to be delivering stolen Nike products to a warehouse in Hawthorne, Calif. There, detectives working with Nike’s global security director found over $5 million in merch, including shoes, accessories, clothing, and “unique prototypes.”

But that’s hardly the first time in recent memory that the LAPD has unearthed such a haul: In June 2023, local authorities discovered several million dollars worth of stolen Nike products at a warehouse in Torrance, Calif., which were found to be linked to stolen cargo trucks at the Port of Los Angeles. 

Several weeks earlier, L.A. County sheriffs arrested a dozen people whom they alleged were part of a crime ring that stole roughly $750,000 in merchandise from a Nike store over the course of a year. 

Chicago and Memphis, too, have dealt with Nike-related crime of late. In early 2023, Nike closed its flagship store in downtown Portland, Ore., because of alleged theft. 

And Memphis, home to one of the company’s largest distribution centers, has suffered multiple recent large-scale thefts: $800,000 worth of product was stolen from a secured container drop yard in September 2022, and this past October another $200,000 was stolen from a Nike store.