Cops Corner: When those low prices just aren't low enough


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June 10

When those low prices just aren’t low enough …

11:27 a.m. 100 block of Cypress Point Parkway. Shoplifting.
Two women and an 8-year-old boy headed over to a local big-box store June 10, but it wasn’t an ordinary shopping trip: Instead, the three tried to walk off with a total of $1128.27 in stolen merchandise, according to Sheriff’s Office reports.

Deputies arrived at the store after an asset protection officer saw the three pick up the store’s plastic tote bags and then walk around the aisles shoving goods into them. He confronted the trio after they walked past the checkout without paying.

One of the two women ran back into the store. Deputies arrived to question the other, and later found the runner walking a short distance away.

The women, both Palatka residents, were charged with grand theft shoplifting and with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The woman who ran was also charged with resisting a merchant. A Palm Coast friend of one of the women took custody of the boy while deputies took the women to the county jail.

June 11

Wasting time with timeshsares

2:55 p.m. First block of Bannbury Lane. Fraud.
An 82-year-old Palm Coast woman tried to sell a timeshare in January, but learned after she’d sent thousands of dollars to the timeshare company’s supposed representative — and gotten nothing in return — that he no longer worked there.

He worked there when she first spoke with him and sent him $6,000; the company received the money.

But a month later, she’d heard nothing back, so she contacted the man again. He told her she could speed up the process by obtaining a quick claim deed on the “side,” according to a Sheriff’s Office report.

She sent the man $199 through PayPal. The company knew nothing of that transaction. And they also didn’t know that the representative had told the woman June 6 — a day after he’d quit work — that she could cancel all of those transactions by paying him $695. She did, in two checks — one for $500, which the man cashed, and another for $195, which he did not, according to the report.

Deputies identified the man through bank information after he cashed the $500 check.

He was helping her put a stop order on the second check when the deputies wrote up their report. Charges against the man are pending, according to a Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman.

June 12

Cookin’ with gas

8:12 p.m. First block of Slocum Path. Burglary.
A man trying to sell his home got news June 12 that someone had been checking it out, but not the way the would-be seller had hoped. A neighbor told him that sometime between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., two men pulled up the house in a white, two-door Dodge Ram pickup.

One stood watch while the other went inside the house and came back out with the owner’s stove, according to a Sheriff's Office report.

They loaded the stove, a black, glass-top Frigidaire model worth about $600-$800, into an open, black landscape trailer, and drove off.

The neighbor’s surveillance video system caught the whole thing on tape, and a deputy took pictures of the footage, according to the report.

The victim and witness gave written statements and the deputy uploaded the pictures to a crime database.

 

 

 

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