No matter if it’s night or day, there is almost always someone selling something on the streets of Vancouver’s troubled Downtown Eastside.

From shoes to batteries to razors, nearly everything is up for grabs. And much of it, police say, is stolen.

“If it is too good to be true… and it is brand new, it’s going to be boosted,” Det. Const. Doug Fell of the Vancouver Police Department told CTV News.

Police say thousands of dollars in stolen goods are exchanged daily in the area, which is infamous for its prolonged drug-use epidemic. Most of those goods are shoplifted from local businesses. The problem is growing, police say, and is worth millions of dollars a year.

“It could be upwards of $50,000 in stolen product going through that block in a day,” Fell said of the area.

Police say merchandise tends to be moved by criminals linked to sophisticated theft operations -- operations that often use vulnerable drug addicts to do the stealing.

“They will give them an average of ten cents on the dollar for whatever product, from a meat product to an iPhone to a jacket to whatever has been stolen,” Fell said.

The practice, called predatory fencing, is so prevalent that the Vancouver Police Department has a special unit dedicated to the problem.

Just last fall, the Anti-Fencing Unit busted a crime ring accused of paying dozens of drug addicts to steal expensive baby formula. The product, which is popular in Asia, can fetch up to $100 on the black market.

London Drugs was one of the stores hit by the formula thefts. Staff say shoplifting is still rampant, with thieves striking up to 20 times a day. Theirs is not an isolated case.

“The problem is enormous,” Tony Hunt, London Drugs’ general manager of loss prevention, told CTV Vancouver. “It costs about four billion dollars a year in Canada.”

With files from CTV Vancouver