Photo: Image of stolen food | Ventura County Sheriff’s Office
Politicians of a certain ilk may claim that the U.S. economy is just hunky-dory, but those would doubt those claims need only point to prices of basic foodstuffs at anyone’s neighborhood supermarket. Many grocery shoppers even claim to have gained impressive arm strength recently; they once could only carry a shopping bag containing $50 of food; today they can easily carry $100 of food in the same bag.
Bad late-night talk show jokes aside, it may well be the effects of inflation driving a certain level of criminality at our local grocery stores. Evidence of that is apparent in the recent arrest of Los Angeles resident Akop Galadzhyan. According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Baltazar Tapia, Gladzhyan had been “suspected of acting as a member of an organized retail theft crew” which targeted high-value food products at Target Stores throughout Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
On the afternoon if May 21st , detectives attached to the VCSD Organized Retail Theft Task Force made contact with Galadzhyan immediately after he “walked out of a retail store with over $1,000 in stolen merchandise,” much of which was in the form of bottled wine, assorted beverages, and packaged meat products. The immediately ensuing investigation identified Galadzhyan as an individual involved in “over $100,000 in merchandise” from a series of Target Stores.
Galadzhyan was taken into custody at the scene and transported to Ventura County jail, where he was booked on multiple burglary and organized retail theft charges with his bail set at $100,000.
