Beware of Teens Targeting Unmanned Stores on Weekend Mornings

Theft Crimes: 35% Involving Teens
43% on Saturdays and Sundays, 40% in Morning Hours
Targeting Businesses with High Cash Usage Like Claw Machine Arcades and Coin Photo Studios

As unmanned stores have significantly increased since the pandemic, theft crimes targeting these stores have also risen accordingly. In particular, it has been found that teenagers often target cash inside unmanned stores during weekend mornings.

On the 7th, S-1 Corporation (CEO Namgung Beom) released data analyzing types of theft crimes in unmanned stores over two and a half years from January 2020 to June this year, by selecting crime data related to unmanned stores from big data of 850,000 customer sites through its Crime Prevention Research Institute.

The analysis showed that theft crimes in unmanned stores increased by 85.7% last year compared to 2020. An S-1 official explained, "With the rise of the 'untact' trend after COVID-19 and the increase in minimum wage leading to more unmanned stores, combined with the economic downturn causing an increase in everyday crimes, theft crimes in unmanned stores have naturally risen."

The most notable characteristic of theft crimes in unmanned stores is the high proportion of juvenile offenders. According to the analysis by S-1’s Crime Prevention Research Institute, while teenagers accounted for only 18.6% of all theft suspects in 2020, they made up the largest share at 34.8% among theft offenders in unmanned stores. S-1 stated, "Unmanned stores have become hangouts for local middle and high school students, which has led to theft crimes. Store owners are suffering double hardships, not only from cash theft losses but also from mental stress caused by business disruptions."

Especially, theft crimes in unmanned stores are concentrated on weekends. Saturdays and Sundays account for 43.4% of all theft crimes. This is also analyzed to be because teenagers are more likely to commit crimes on weekends when they do not attend school. The high crime occurrence rate during morning hours is also notable. While the overall theft crime rate in the morning is only 9.0%, it reaches 39.1% in unmanned stores. Since unmanned stores have fewer customers in the morning, offenders often disguise themselves as customers to commit crimes.

Among unmanned stores, the industries most targeted by thieves are claw machine arcades (35%), coin photo booths (22%), and coin laundromats (17%), where cash usage is high. On the other hand, unmanned PC rooms (4%) and unmanned convenience stores (4%), which are the most actively transitioning to unmanned operations, showed relatively low crime rates.

An S-1 dispatch officer is explaining the Ansim24 product to the owner of an unmanned store.

Accordingly, security solutions to prevent theft crimes in unmanned stores are gaining attention in the industry. S-1 launched ‘Ansim24,’ a security product dedicated to unmanned stores that provides video security, emergency dispatch, cash box monitoring, and power outage monitoring services. This product has attracted great interest from small unmanned store owners because it offers compensation up to 10 million KRW in case of cash theft. ‘Ansim24 Plus,’ which adds advanced solutions such as intelligent video surveillance and remote warning broadcasts from S-1’s integrated security control center, is actively being adopted in large franchise unmanned stores such as unmanned convenience stores and unmanned PC rooms.

An S-1 official said, "Analyzing the latest crime trends such as theft in unmanned stores and helping prevent damages is our role as the industry’s number one company. We will continue to release related solutions so that store owners operating unmanned stores can run their businesses with peace of mind."