Shopper has been charged after four days of stealing $100 worth of items using a sneaky “pass-around” self-checkout trick
Charges have been brought against an alleged thief after she was accused of stealing more than $100 worth of groceries from a retailer over the course of a month.
Toni Marie Irwin, 42, allegedly took the goods home after failing to scan them at a self-service checkout.
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The thefts reportedly happened at a Martin’s grocery store in DuBois, Pennsylvania, about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, according to court documents seen by the court Courier Express.
Police responded to the store on March 28 to process a theft report.
Irwin was at the store three days earlier and allegedly stole about $40 worth of groceries and other goods, including soda, milk and hand sanitizer, a theft prevention worker told police.
A store manager told investigators that Irwin appeared nervous during the purchase.
The suspect used her loyalty card, which allowed the employee to locate three other purchases Irwin made earlier in the month.
In those transactions, Irwin allegedly stole around $80 worth of additional merchandise using the same “passing” method, sometimes known as “skip scanning.”
She is accused of stealing everything from bread and chicken to snack cakes and tampons.
In an interview with police on March 29, Irwin said the unscanned items were nothing more than an error, court documents said.
When the suspect was shown a photo in which she allegedly scanned three items at once, Ivrin reiterated that she never intentionally stole anything from the store.
A preliminary hearing for Irwin is scheduled for June 23.
She’s not the only shopper to have been arrested on such allegations in recent weeks.
A suspect, who did not give his name, was arrested on April 26 for stealing $328 worth of merchandise from a Meijer store in Seven Hills, Ohio, a suburb south of Cleveland.
The suspect used the same method as Irwin.
This was reportedly the fifth time in less than a month that he had been arrested for shoplifting.