Sears Holdings has revealed that for at least one month now, Kmart customer account data has been stolen!  Kmart, along with Dairy Queen and Orange Julius,  joins the dozens of retailers and Too Big to Jail banks that have had their customer accounts hacked, since the beginning of the year.

Kmart’s IT personnel didn’t detect the hack job until 09 October 2014, but think the customer account data theft (through malware) started back in September.  They admit that customer’s credit and debit card info was stolen.

In New Hampshire, somebody broke into a Kmart in the middle of the night and ripped off two laptop computers.

In Wisconsin, a man and a woman were arrested for steeling $340 of stuff from Kmart, they were also accused of resisting arrest.

In North Carolina, a man and a woman claim their Chihuahua was stolen from their car while they were shopping in Kmart.   However, they stated they left the sunroof open so the dog wouldn’t overheat.  Police are not investigating pending more information.

Sears claims they got a new $1-billion USD loan last week. You might think all those loans can only be bad news in the long run for Sears Holdings, but did you know JP Morgan-Chase reported that it’s actually JCPenney whose in trouble, with way more loans than Sears Holdings.

The rapidly advancing decline of Sears-Kmart is driving down the value of CMBS (Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities).  CMBS are usually connected to shopping mall owners.

Barclays reported that loans to shopping mall owners, made in 2006-07 were too restrictive, saying “debt service coverage ratios are usually in the 1.2x range and will not be able to withstand even a temporary loss of large tenant.”  This means that everytime a Sears or Kmart (or JCPenney, etc) located in a shopping mall shuts down, the mall owner gets a big financial screw job.

closing update 07 October 2014