While it does happen occasionally…under 1% of our merchandise actually turns up as “stolen” merchandise. In the grand picture, that is a SMALL percentage. At SAMS PAWN, we take certain precautions (as well as some state and county regulations) in order to prevent continuous illegal transactions. We turn copies of all pawns/purchases in to Madison County Police as well as Alton Police EVERY day. State regulations require us to hold pawned items in store for 2 days, and purchased items for 10 days before releasing them for sale or back to owners in order to check for theft. We, as a store, block customers who are found to have stolen items from ANY future transactions so as not to have repeated offenses! What people don’t realize is that we lose out on the money paid AND the merchandise when items come up as stolen. At SAMS, we work closely with all victims and law enforcement in order to assist in any way with suspected stolen merchandise!