Retailers such as Best Buy and L.L. Bean, among dozens of others, are cracking down on fraudulent customer returns of merchandise, putting restrictions on customers selected by their risk profiles. Such moves fly in the face of the no-questions-asked returns policies that have helped the U.S. retail industry’s growth. The retailers’ pushback against returns become controversial after recent reports that electronics chain Best Buy and others are using data analytics firms to identify customers who may be abusing the returns system. Irvine, Calif.-based The Retail Equation (TRE), the data analytics firm that Best Buy has hired, works with 39 of the top 100 retailers, according to its website. Its clients reportedly include Home Depot, J.C. Penney, Sephora and Victoria’s Secret. Retailers lost $17.6 billion in 2017 owing to merchandise return fraud, according to data analytics firm Appriss, the parent company of TRE, which cited the National Real Estate Federation’s Organized Retail Crime Survey for the year.…