The NYPD is looking for six members of a retail theft crew that has targeted nine sportswear and clothes shops in three boroughs during a three-month-long crime spree, with one of their biggest scores carried out in a sporting goods store inside the Queens Center Mall in late June.
Police from the 110h Precinct in Elmhurst reported that a half dozen of the looters entered the JD Sports store, located at 90-15 Queens Blvd., at around 3 p.m. on Friday, June 28, and removed approximately $9,800 in merchandise. The perpetrators then piled into a gray minivan that drove off in an unknown direction. No one was injured during the heist.
During the nine heists, the shoplifting crew stole approximately $53,000 in store merchandise. They struck three times in Brooklyn, stealing approximately $15,500 worth of clothing, and targeted six more stores in the Bronx during the three month crime spree that started in late May, with the last grand larceny reported in mid-July. The value of the merchandise that was stolen in the Bronx was just over $28,000.
The NYPD released a slew of surveillance images of the suspects as they ransacked one of the sporting goods stores and described them as between 21 and 29 years old. They all wore masks and hoods to conceal their identities. No one was injured in any of the nine retail theft incidents, police said.
A reward of up to $3,500 is being offered for information that leads to their arrests.
Anyone with information regarding these incidents is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, or on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) @NYPDTips. All calls and messages are kept confidential.
Through July 28, the 110th Precinct has reported 628 grand larcenies so far in 2024, 18 more than the 610 reported at the same point last year, an increase of 3%, according to the most recent CompStat report.
