Darienite (https://darienite.com/tag/larceny-from-a-business-2018)
Sometime overnight between Sunday and Monday, Dec. 2 and 3, a store on the Post Road was burglarized after a rear door was forcibly entered — but the store owner reported only $40 missing from the cash register, police said.
Vanessa Vence-Small, 50, of New Windsor, New York, was sentenced Thursday, Nov. 28 by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer in New Haven to 30 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for embezzling more than $1.1 million from a Darien auto dealership. — an announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Connecticut
According to court documents and statements made in court, Vence-Small was the controller of Felix F. Callari, Inc., doing business as Continental BMW of Darien, an automobile dealership. From October 2014 to June 2017, Vence-Small made 65 unauthorized electronic fund transfers, totaling $904,659.29, from the dealership’s bank account to her personal American Express account. She also issued and signed 28 checks drawn on the dealership’s bank account, in the total amount of $207,777.78, to pay various third parties, including credit card companies, contractors who performed work at her residence, and a different dealership from which she purchased a car.
An employee at Stop and Shop supermarket at 148 Heights Road was caught by store security personnel trying to leave the business with seven cold-cuts sandwiches valued at $7.99, Darien police were told. Darien police issued this further information about the incident, including accusations not proven in court:
A Stop and Shop employee called police at 11:32 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 13 to tell them an “asset protection” employee had stopped a 19-year-old Norwalk woman who worked at the store when she tried to leave without paying for the seven sandwiches she had in her backpack. The total price of the sandwiches is $55.86. The store detective told police that the woman had admitted she was trying to steal the sandwiches.
At 5 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 8, police were told by a restaurant employee that someone with a white van was siphoning out used cooking oil from a container behind the Sugar Bowl restaurant at 1033 Post Road. Police got the call from the employee, who had just arrived at the restaurant. The employee said he saw the white van backed into an alley behind the building, and when he approached the man who was doing the siphoning, the man said he had “been contracted” to take the oil. The employee knew this wasn’t true and called police.
An employee of Whole Foods Market told police that a surveillance camera recording showed a man put several bags of frozen shrimp and salmon from a freezer into his cart, then the video shows him rolling it all out of the store without paying. The incident was reported to police on Thursday, June 28. The Darien police announcement doesn’t indicate whether anyone is reported to have stopped the man before he left the store at 150 Ledge Road, and the police statement doesn’t indicate the circumstances about why the video recording was looked up or when the incident happened. The man was wearing a black baseball hat, black shirt and jeans, police said.
The former controller of Felix F. Callari Inc., doing business as Continental BMW of Darien, stole more than $1.1 million from the company, according to law enforcement officials. She pleaded guilty in Federal Court Thursday to one count of wire fraud arising from an embezzlement scheme. From October 2014 to June 2017, Vanessa Vence-Small, 50, of New Windsor, N.Y. made 65 unauthorized electronic fund transfers, totaling $904,659.29, from the dealership’s bank account to her personal American Express account, according to an announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Connecticut. The announcement is based on court documents and statements made in court. She also issued and signed 28 checks drawn on the dealership’s bank account, in the total amount of $207,777.78, to pay various third parties, including credit card companies, contractors who performed work at her residence, and a different dealership from which she purchased a car, the announcement said.
When a store detective saw Aida Hanna, 70, walk past cash registers carrying items and not paying for them when she left Whole Foods Market, the detective confronted her outside and later looked over the loot, it turned out to be $222.58 worth of relatively expensive goods: deodorant, argan oil and various seeds. The woman, a resident of Staten Island, N.Y., had been seen by the store detective (also known as a “loss prevention officer”) putting the items in a black tote bag before walking past the registers and out the door. Police were called at 5:17 p.m., Jan. 16 by the supermarket at 150 Ledge Road. According to police, the woman admitted to them that she took the items without paying.
During a busy pre-Christmas day at a Darien beauty spa, a cash register was momentarily left unattended, which leads town police to believe that that was the moment when someone stole $200 from it. The matter was reported to police by management of Lanphier Day Spa on Dec. 26. The cash was stolen from a register in the “boutique room” of the establishment at 20 West Ave. The police announcement didn’t say why management believed that the money was stolen on the particular date of Dec.