Credit: Scott Warman / Unsplash.com
The East Norriton man faces felony charges for his theft, said reports.
One East Norriton man is facing charges of theft after multiple incidents at the same store resulted in over $1,300 worth of stolen groceries, police said.
Lawrence J. Leary, 51, of the 3200 block of Kennedy Road in East Norriton, is facing felony charges for retail theft, via under ring, after police investigated incidents ranging from early August through mid-September of this year. According to reports, Whitpain Township Police Department was called to the Giant food store at 1760 DeKalb Pike, in Blue Bell, for reports of a retail theft around 11:05 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 9.
Police said that a representative of Giant, a loss prevention officer for the business, meet with the responding officer to report eight different thefts occurring between Aug. 8 and Sept. 9 all of 2024. The LPO was made aware, he said, of the thefts on Sept. 2, but required time to “gather relevant information and contact police,” reports said.
According to reports, the LPO alleged that Leary had stolen goods from Giant on eight different occasions, including:
for a total value of merchandise stolen of $1,385.88. The LPO said that a store employee alerted him to Leary on Sept. 2, 2024, utilizing his phone to scan groceries prior to checking out, said police. The store offers a service called the “Scan It” app, allowing shoppers to scan groceries as they take them from the shelf and place them in their cart.
“The shopper then scans their phone at the register for a total of all of the items taken, in used properly,” explained reports. “The shopper does not have to scan all the items at the register, only the Scan It application’s bar code.”
After the Giant store’s LPO reviewed in-store video, he said he saw Leary under-ring a large number of groceries of the course of eight incidents. He told police, reports said, that Leary was the same actor in all eight dates’ events.
Reports stated that video shows Leary in all eight incidents approaching a cash register with numerous items in his cart and scanning his cell phone. After obtaining records to compare against the man’s cart contents, the LPO determined Leary had only scanned for some items, and not the entire cartload. The total amount paid for each incident was only $74.01.
The LPO told Whitpain police he was able to obtain exact valuation after observing the goods stolen on video. An account linked to the man’s Scan It app, a Giant bonus card, was matched to an owner of an email account listed as “LJ Juda,” however the bonus card account had no additional identifying information, police said.
Leary was seen, according to police, in additional video surveillance footage, to be loading his groceries into a darkly colored Kia vehicle. According to reports, on Oct. 12, Leary returned to the same store on DeKalb Pike, and was reported by Giant employees and an off-duty officer who had seen an informational flyer on the matter. He was then identified, police said, as Leary.
Leary faces a preliminary hearing for his felony charge on Oct. 31 at 11:15 a.m. before Magisterial District Judge Suzan Leonard. He was released on an unsecured bond signature.
All suspects and defendants are innocent until proven guilty. This story was compiled using public court records.
