SINGAPORE: A group of foreign students who lived in the same apartment worked together to shoplift clothes from Uniqlo by removing their price tags and radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips before heading to self-checkout counters.
Four of them – Indian nationals aged between 20 and 26 – were sentenced to jail for between 40 and 65 days on Wednesday (Nov 22).
They faced a range of charges – either for group theft or attempted theft with common intention, and some of them had charges taken into consideration.
Shihora Ridham Mukeshbhai, a 20-year-old man, was sentenced to 65 days’ jail; Hun Smit Ashokbhai, 21, was given 45 days’ jail; Kuvadiya Milan Ghansyambhai, 26, was sentenced to 40 days’ jail; and Chauhan Ruchi Sanjaykumar, a 25-year-old woman, was sentenced to 50 days’ jail.
The court heard that the four were part of a group of six Indian nationals who were in Singapore on student passes to study at different schools here.
They stayed together at the same apartment. There were also others involved but they left Singapore before investigations commenced.
The thefts and attempted thefts took place at the Uniqlo store in Orchard Central in October.
Some of the offenders would pick the apparel to steal, while the others would remove the price tags. The price tags contained RFID chips – if the price tags were removed, the payment machine at the store would not be able to detect the apparel, and the group would be able to steal them without setting off the security alarm when leaving.
On the evening of Oct 12, a group of nine of them went to Uniqlo Orchard Central intending to steal.
They picked various clothes and removed their price tags before placing them into shopping baskets.
After the baskets were filled, some of them would take the items to self-checkout counters, where they would pay for tote bags that cost S$3.90 each to give the false impression that they had paid for everything.
They then left the store about one-and-a-half hours later with 64 pieces of stolen goods worth about S$1,800.
A few days later on Oct 16, another group of six went to the same Uniqlo store and placed clothes in their baskets using the same method.
However, a security guard at the store noticed the behaviour of two of the thieves, who were hurriedly packing clothes into the tote bags they had bought.
When the guard asked to see their receipt as proof of payment, one of them lied that the receipt was with a friend elsewhere and walked away.
The other thief then lied that he had spotted their friend and walked away quickly, leaving behind the clothes in the tote bags at the self-checkout counter.
A sales assistant lodged an online police report that day about the attempted theft. The police conducted an extensive review of the closed-circuit television footages at the store and identified the thieves, arresting them on Oct 30.
Investigations revealed that the second group had tried to steal 72 pieces of clothes valued at about S$2,300.
The prosecutor said the offences were planned and premeditated, and that while the shoplifting offences were easy to commit, they were difficult to detect and apprehend.
Two of the co-accused, Brahmbhatt Komal Chetankumar and Christian Arpita Arvindbhai, did not go through with their guilty pleas on Thursday.
They will return to court for pre-trial conferences later this month.