Thief hit the same Pierce County store four times, stole $6,000 in perfume, police say
According to Gig Harbor Police reports received by The News Tribune Oct. 24, an Ulta Beauty employee told officers who responded to the fifth shoplifting incident that she believed the suspect was the same as the one involved in the first incident on Sept. 30, but different from the suspect on Oct. 1. He was using a backpack that appeared to be the same as one of the suspects in the Oct. 5 case, the report said.
The police report also said when police received an itemized list of stolen merchandise from the fifth incident, the total came out to $2,398.
Original post: Ulta Beauty lost thousands of dollars in perfume in recent weeks over five potentially related shoplifting incidents, Gig Harbor police say.
The same man allegedly stole over $6,000 in fragrance products from the store at 5500 Olympic Dr. in Gig Harbor over four separate days, according to police.
A fifth shoplifting incident possibly involving a different suspect occurred Saturday, Gig Harbor Police Lt. Fred Douglas told The News Tribune via email Monday. Because that suspect’s method of stealing the items was similar to the previous four incidents, the incident is likely related, he wrote.
The first shoplifting call occurred on Sept. 30, when a man stole about $2,000 in fragrances, according to Douglas. It was followed by calls on Oct. 1, Oct. 2 and Oct. 5, and it is likely that the same suspect was involved in all four cases, Douglas told The News Tribune via email Oct. 18.
The second shoplifting call came in just after noon on Oct. 1, according to a Gig Harbor Police Department report. A man grabbed several boxes of items from a display case near the front of the store and put them in his backpack, then walked out without paying, employees told police. They said eight boxes of Sauvage Parfum products were stolen, worth $1,652.02 in total.
The third call came in at approximately 10:53 a.m. on Oct. 2, another police report says. A man came into the store and stole an estimated $2,000 in perfume and cologne from the display case near the front entrance, putting them in his backpack, the sales manager told police. The sales manager identified him as the same man from the previous day.
A fourth call came in at approximately 8:13 p.m. on Oct. 5, according to another police report. The sales manager told the officer that two men entered the store a few minutes earlier, and another employee said she could tell from their clothing that at least one of them was the suspect who had stolen items in previous shoplifts. The staff members told officers the suspects went to the fragrance area and put unsecured fragrance bottles into their backpacks. The sales manager estimated the total worth of the stolen items was at least $1,000.
Douglas told The News Tribune via email Monday that a man, possibly different from the one in the previous four incidents, stole an estimated $700 to $800 in items from Ulta on Oct. 19. It was “basically the exact same scenario where he came in and put items in a backpack,” Douglas wrote.
Douglas told The News Tribune that they haven’t confirmed or located a suspect yet.
“We are actively investigating these cases and doing some additional proactive patrols to deter these thefts,” he wrote.