CSI:Target

Target has it's own forensic team. [Link]

On June 2, 2007, 18-year-old Kelsey Smith left her home in Overland Park, Kans. to go to a mall. After she failed to return that evening, Smith's family found her car in a parking lot. A Target (nyse: TGT - news - people ) shopping bag and her purse, minus her cell phone and ATM card, were inside.

Over the next few days crime investigators in a lab near Minneapolis helped police crack the case. They scrutinized surveillance footage from cameras in and around the store. It showed a man who left Target shortly before Smith confronting the young woman. After enhancing the images on their computers, the snoops were able to get a decent look at the suspect and his vehicle, details that helped police identify Edwin Hall, 27, who was arrested the same day Smith's body was found near Longview Lake, Mo. He will go on trial for her murder this year.

The investigators are in the employ of Target Forensic Services. Their crime lab would count as sophisticated if run by a police force. But this one, incongruously, is owned by a retail chain. The $63 billion (revenues) Target got into forensics as a way to combat shoplifting and such crimes but has taken its skills far beyond the department store. Its seven-person team of investigators, most of them former law enforcement officials, spend 70% of their time fighting theft, fraud and personal injury cases involving Target's 1,600 stores. But the lab is also frequently tapped by city, state and federal law-enforcement agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to solve big cases.