Couple jailed for stealing milk powder to resell for profit
Published on Aug 14, 2014 11:47 AM
By Ian Poh
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SINGAPORE - Emboldened by their success at shoplifting milk powder for their children, a couple continued doing for profit and posted advertisements on Facebook to offer milk at discounted prices.
When an order came in for 32 tins of powder, they filled it over two months by repeatedly stealing from various supermarkets.
On Thursday, the wife, Siti Husnizah Hussain, 36, was sentenced to two months in jail after admitting eight counts of theft over $2,500 of milk powder. Her husband, 26-year-old Iskandar Samad, was sentenced in July to 10 months in jail for the thefts and an unrelated drug offence.
The court heard that the couple, who have four young children, had initially stolen milk powder for their children earlier this year.
After receiving a response to their ads, they quoted the prospective buyer $1,400 and said they would need a month to "make the order".
On three occasions between March 11 and April 25, they stole 27 tins of powder from Giant supermarket in Sembawang Shopping Centre, each time loading the loot into a baby pram and shopping trolley. The couple would also place other items into the carts and pay only for these, walking out with the milk products undetected.
They eventually completed the order and received payment, but were caught after a Giant employee discovered discrepancies during an inventory check and trawled through the supermarket's camera footage.
For each count of theft in a dwelling, Siti Husnizah could have been jailed up to seven years and fined.
