Thieves seem to know exactly what they are looking for: In an incident in Chicago, for example, a team of men made off with $70K to $90K worth of hair from a beauty supply store and didn’t bother touching the cash register at all.

Apparently, an illicit hair market has developed in many cities. Salon owners say random vendors regularly stop in to try and sell their merchandise. In many cases, only an expert would be able to tell whether the hair is high-quality real deal, most of which is imported from India and Malaysia, or shoddy synthetic material. It’s also nearly impossible to tell whether the hair at hand was stolen.