A fuming business owner is cracking down on thieves who repeatedly raid his gift shop – to steal rubber ducks.

Wayne Jarvis, 42, was stunned when CCTV captured five shoplifters pinching items from his shop in just one week.

The businessman, who opened Fifty Scents in Worcester, in April, has lost hundreds of pounds of stock to the thieves.

Bizarrely, the most popular items targeted by shoplifters are Wayne's novelty ducks which he normally sells for £7.99 each.

Other goods favoured by thieves are the store's bath bombs and candles.

Wayne said: "We probably have an average of three shoplifters target us every week."



"It's quite often everyday Joe's who end up stealing, so reporting them to the police doesn't quite help as they're not on the system."



"They're taking everything from rubber ducks to bath bombs and chocolate."



"It tends to be more ducks that they steal, I don't get why. It's the rubber ducks. Ten out of the 25 types of ducks we stock have been stolen."



"Some of the stuff we've had stolen you just think why? But it's because they can, not because they need to."





So far Wayne believes more than 15 ducks, worth around £120, have been stolen from his shelves.

Wayne, who has three children, is fighting back by shaming shoplifters by posting videos of their crimes on social media.

He added: "The police do what they can but the law doesn't allow them to do much, which is the main problem. "

"One guy who was caught was given a community resolution, which is just an apology. "

"Quite often we resolve it by putting their faces on Facebook. Quite often they come and pay for it."



"They know they can get away with it, they haven't got to worry about it."





"We get a lot who just don't want to pay for the stuff. Most of them have been a one day."



"One week we had five in one week. Mostly you tend to find two or three a week."



"We've had £700 of stock stolen but it would've been £10,000 if we hadn't cracked down on them."





"I don't just think it's my shop, I think it's everyone. I'm just the one who is catching them and reporting them."



"It's everybody. We've caught kids, pensioners, adults, drug addicts."



"It's a free for all for shoplifters at the moment."



"You can't look at someone and say they're a shoplifter. It's not the way people look, it's the way they're behaving."



"As the sentences handed to shoplifters get less and less, shoplifting has got worse and worse."



"Sometimes the bigger chain stores will stop them at the door, take the stuff off them and kick them out but that's and it never gets reported."



CCTV footage from the bath and body retailer shows light-fingered customers scooping up handfuls of stock into their bags.



On July 5 a woman is captured slipping one of the ducks into her Tote bag in full-view of the security camera.

In another clip from August 4, a woman can be seen using a cuddly toy to mask her placing a candle under her leather jacket.

Just two days later on August 6, a man can be seen shoving a box of chocolates under his t-shirt.



Other footage shows one thief brazenly shoving a handful of ducks into her handbag in front of a CCTV camera.



A spokesperson for West Mercia Police said: "In Worcester, the town centre team is tackling shoplifting through increased visibility, working with partner agencies and building relationships with business communities. "

"Officers carry out regular patrols, in both uniform and plain clothes, in Worcester city centre to deter criminals from offending and to catch them in process. "

"Officers are deployed to locations where we know crime regularly occurs, this is based on evidence and intelligence gathered. "

"Where appropriate, we will pursue justice either through a local resolution or through the courts as appropriate based on the circumstances of each case."