In June 2022, a man stole eight milk powder tins from a FairPrice outlet in Punggol and several toys from a Toys R Us store.
After a security guard caught him red-handed, he admitted that he wanted to resell the milk powder online for a profit.
On Thursday (23 Feb), 34-year-old Chen Yixian, Joshua pleaded guilty to two charges of theft and was sentenced to three weeks in jail.
According to Channel NewsAsia (CNA), the incident occurred on the night of 22 June 2022.
Chen, who worked as a technician, went to the NTUC FairPrice outlet at Waterway Point in Punggol.
Source: Google Maps
He proceeded to steal eight 900g tins of Enfagrow Pro A+ Stage 3 milk powder, worth a total of S$422.40.
Afterwards, Chen hid behind a pillar to place the tins in a cooler bag that he brought and left the supermarket at around 9.15pm.
However, a security guard on duty at the supermarket caught him in the act.
He then detained Chen and brought him to the security office before recovering the eight tins.
Besides that, the officer also found other items that had Toys R Us labels inside the bag.
Subsequently, Chen was arrested and confessed that he wanted to resell the milk powder on Carousell to make a profit.
Further investigations revealed that Chen went to Toys R Us earlier that same night to steal toys.
Source: Google Maps
These included a Batman Lego set and a Thomas & Friends wooden toy that cost S$99.99 and S$34.99 respectively. In total, the stolen goods were worth S$213.94.
CNA reports that all the stolen items were recovered.
Additionally, another six tins of 1.8kg Enfagrow Pro A+ Stage 3 were discovered in his possession at the mall’s parking lot.
Regarding the stolen toys, Chen claimed that they were for his children. As for the other milk powder tins, he was unable to explain how he obtained them.
In court, the prosecutor asked for three weeks’ jail for Chen. In response, Chen’s lawyer said that his client was a “hardworking man” with a “difficult and lonely childhood”.
This led him to “develop certain perspectives of his duties as a married man”, he added.
As Chen took on “burdens and stresses”, this also led him to “make these mistakes”, the lawyer said.
CNA notes that Chen’s case is one of the 80 incidents of stolen milk powder from supermarkets reported last year. This is also according to figures the police released in January.
As a result, the thefts led to estimated losses of S$27,000.
A majority of the offenders in the last three years were aged between their 20s to 40s. Apart from that, 35% of the cases were carried out in groups of two or more.
In January this year, it was reported that a FairPrice outlet in Bukit Batok locked up infant milk formula behind transparent screens.
As the products are among those that are “typically shoplifted”, they started the initiative to prevent such incidents from happening.
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Featured image adapted from Dollars And Sense, for illustration purposes only.
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