The owner of an East Los Angeles bakery is out thousands of dollars after a thief snatched the shop’s automatic card reader over the weekend.
Footage captured by the store’s security cameras showed the Oct. 18 incident inside Rene’s Bakery on Whittier Boulevard.
The suspect, a woman wearing a dark-colored hoodie and sunglasses paid cash for the items she bought, but when the person behind the register briefly moved away, the woman is seen snatching the wireless card reader off the counter and putting it into the pocket of her hoodie and leaves as if nothing happened.
Since the incident, the bakery’s owner, Rene Ocampo, told KTLA’s Carlos Saucedo that he’s been defrauded of more than $18,000.
Ocampo believes the woman planned the theft, making sure to pay for what she bought with cash, so that she didn’t leave a digital footprint.
Having run the bakery for four years, he said it’s not fair that the alleged thief is now benefitting from his hard work and added that he and others in the strip mall where his bakery is located are frustrated with crime in the area.
In an unrelated incident last week, a nearby Metro by T-Mobile storefront sits boarded up after it was targeted by a would-be thief in a white van who attempted twice to crash into the store but was unable to get through the metal security gates.
“That truck came at about one in the morning,” Giselle Lopez with Metro by T-Mobile told KTLA. “He tried to get into the store, pushing it with his van and he broke into it but I’m guessing he heard the alarm. It’s really loud and he just left automatically, but he broke everything.”
While the attempted break-in did not amount to much for the wannabe thief, repairs to the storefront have been costly.
Investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are investigating the incidents, but so far, no arrests have been made.
The post Small East L.A. business owners targeted by thieves speak out appeared first on KTLA.
