It is happening across the country, and causing yet another headache for a retail industry that suffered an estimated $112 billion in losses from theft last year.
Much of the rise in retail theft across the country has been attributed to the brazen smash and grab robberies often caught on video, but now there is a new trend.
It is called ram raiding, and it is becoming increasingly popular with this brash new generation of thieves.
Ram raiding involves using a car, that is often stolen, and driving it into a storefront like a battering ram.
It is happening across the country, and causing yet another headache for a retail industry that suffered an estimated $112 billion in losses from theft last year.
Watch above as a car as smashes right through the front entrance of a store in Chicago.
The tires screech as the car winds up in the middle of the store.
The driver then climbs out and is soon joined by the rest of the crew, all four of whom stroll right into the store.
All five then get to work looting the store and grabbing everything in sight.
They then flee the scene but leave the car since it is stolen and not registered in any of their names.
A high-end sneaker store in Chicago suffered a similar ram raid, and the thieves got away with $100,000 in merchandise.
The store is now rushing to finish repairs, so they do not miss out on the boost in sales that comes with the holiday season.
"We are working as we speak, and it happened three weeks ago, so we still haven't been in business," the sneaker store's owner tells Inside Edition while discussing the financial hit this robbery continues to have on the establishment. "We are expecting to be back in business soon to try and get the holiday rush."
In nearby Missouri, thieves ram-raided a gun store.
This time, they drove a stolen Hyundai Elantra into the store and managed to wreak havoc in less than two minutes.
"They got about $28,000 in firearms," the owner tells Inside Edition. "The total damage, the whole bill, was just about $200,000."
Even when thieves make off with nothing, the damages they are causing are a huge and hefty burden for store owners.
In Los Angeles, video caught thieves trying to loot a jewelry store.
The first attempt at breaking through failed, but the second time proved to be the charm.
Once inside JRS Diamond and Jewelry, the thieves start smashing every display in site and ultimately make off with ... nothing.
Plywood now covers the entrance to the store while repairs are underway.
"They got nothing. Everything was locked up, everything was put away in the safes at night so there was nothing for them to get," says the jewelry store's owner. "All they did was cause damage."
Security expert Louis Perry says stores now have to take steps to anticipate and stop these ram raids.
"A business needs to do whatever it needs to do within the law to protect its business," says Perry. "And what this business I think should do is put beams in the ground so if a car attempts to go through it will not go through it and it will stop it immediately."
Perry also says that he thinks ram raiding is here to stay.
