Pawn Shop Owner, Employee Plead In Large Retail Theft Scheme

The owner of two Lower Bucks County pawn shops and one of his employees pleaded guilty Wednesday for their role in a scheme that authorities said used “professional retail thieves.”

Michael Stein, 36, of Middletown, pleaded guilty to corrupt organizations and receiving stolen property.

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Stein owned Levittown Quick Cash Trading Post in the 4000 block of New Falls Road in Bristol Township and Morrisville Loan and Pawn on West Trenton Avenue in Falls Township.

Store employee Brian Jancia, 29, Holmes, Delaware County, pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property.

The two men were arrested last winter along with 30 others, the majority drug users who were stealing items that would later be resold through the pawn shops.

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A multi-year-long investigation of Levittown-area retail thefts folded into the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office’s Operation Booster Club.

Authorities said the crooks generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue through the purchase and resale of merchandise stolen from chain stores between January 2014 and October 2017. The total stolen items purchased for resale numbered around 5,000 and was valued at $700,000.

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Authorities said the pawn shop workers purchased stolen goods from the thieves – known as “boosters” – and would pay them about 30 percent to 40 percent of the stolen item’s retail value. The pawn shop owner and employees would then take the stolen goods to a warehouse before selling them on eBay and other online shopping venues.

In a grand jury indictment last year, it was stated that pawn shop employees ignored that many of the items brought in for resale were new-in-box and boosters had previously admitted to retail thefts. The workers also allegedly suggested that boosters get gift cards because the businesses could pay an average of 50 percent of face value to the retail thieves.

Items taken by the boosters were beauty products, blenders, kitchen faucets, computer hard drives and vacuums. Another way boosters took part in the scheme was to return stolen goods in exchange for a gift card from the store.

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Starting in 2015, loss prevention staff at CVS, Giant Food Stores, Home Depot, Target, and Walmart stores began seeing an uptick in the number of retail thefts in their stores around the Philadelphia region. Online tracking tools were used to detect that stolen merchandise was being sold by Levittown Quick Cash Trading Post and Morrisville Loan and Pawn, authorities said.

“These defendants ran a scheme to profit off of those struggling with substance use disorder and take advantage of the opioid crisis ravaging Pennsylvania,” Attorney General Josh Shapiro said this week in a statement. “The companies they targeted faces significant financial loss, which was passed on to consumers in our Commonwealth. My Office is holding the accountable for the despicable enterprise they operated in Bucks County.”

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Stein will be sentenced at a later date. He has entered into a cooperation plea agreement with prosecutors.