LEOMINSTER — On Friday, Nov. 3, 2023, Officer Caulin Salvi of the Leominster Police Department was dispatched to the Hannaford supermarket on Lancaster Street following a report of a female shoplifting and/or attempting some type of gift card fraud.
(The account and quotations in this article were taken from the printed Personnel Narrative of Officer Salvi.)
“I was advised by dispatch that the female party was recognized by Hannaford’s asset protection employees as potentially being involved in organized retail crimes of a similar nature at this and other locations,” Officer Salvi said. “Dispatch further advised me that the female was Asian, wearing a gray outfit and had long black hair.”
Officer Salvi entered the parking lot of Hannaford from the main entrance on Lancaster Street and drove to the front of the store, where he observed a woman with long dark hair in a faded light blue denim jacket walking away from his cruiser between cars in the parking lot.
“I approached the entrance near the bakery and stopped my vehicle, I then observed two females, one wearing a Hannaford’s sweater, following the female in the denim jacket with their phones out,” Officer Salvi said. “I began driving towards the females as I now believed that this individual was the female in question.”
The suspect got into a vehicle and exited the parking lot.
Officer Salvi turned on his lights and sirens, and approached the vehicle, which had taken a right turn out of the parking lot onto Lancaster Street. The vehicle came to a stop just before the intersection of Eden Glen and Lancaster Street.
“I observed the female party had a passenger in the vehicle and requested the female show me her driver’s license which she did,” Officer Salvi said. “I determined there was a language barrier as the female was only understanding some of my commands. The female party was identified as YaMei Shi via her California driver’s license and indicated that she spoke a Chinese language.”
YaMei Shi, 33, is a resident of 337 W Newmark Avenue, Monterey Park, California. According to police, she’s married, unemployed, and was born in China.
Shi’s passenger showed Officer Salvi a photograph of his passport on his cell phone which identified him as Fei Shi of Fujian China.
At this time, Officer Renzo Vasconcelos arrived on scene and stayed with Shi and her passenger, while Officer Salvi went to speak with a Hannaford employee in the parking lot.
The Hannaford employee – an accounts payable coordinator for the supermarket – showed Officer Salvi a recording of surveillance footage on her phone of Shi placing gift cards into a black fanny pack around her waist.
Another person who caught Shi in the act was a loss prevention specialist for Retail Business Services Asset Protection, an organization that has partnered with Hannaford. She reported the incident to her higher up, an asset protection investigations specialist.
The asset protection investigation specialist told the loss prevention specialist that “a group of Asian males and females were conducting large scale gift card fraud using cards stolen from their stores and many others.”
After hearing this, the loss prevention specialist called police and followed the suspect into the parking lot with the accounts payable coordinator.
After speaking with the employee, Officer Salvi returned to Shi’s vehicle. He asked Officer Vasconcelos if Shi was wearing a black fanny pack around her waist.
“Officer Vasconcelos stated he could see one on her person and I approached the driver’s side door. I ordered YaMei out of the vehicle and had her step to the trunk of her car,” Officer Salvi explained. “I had YaMei place her hands on the trunk and began to pat frisk. I felt a weight and some square shaped object in one of the pockets then removed the bag from YaMei. I placed YaMei in handcuffs and double locked them before continuing. I removed a stack of Apple gifts cards from the right and left pockets that appeared to match the items I saw on [the employee’s] phone. I discovered an additional stack of cards inside the black bag just as [the employee] had said.”
Officer Salvi detained YaMei in a cruiser while he secured the items he had removed from her fanny pack. He then informed the accounts payable coordinator that she should have an employee confirm the number of cards that were taken or altered from the store.
When the accounts payable coordinator informed Officer Salvi that Shi’s male passenger had not participated in the shoplifting incident inside the supermarket, Officer Salvi told him he was free to go.
“I determined that Fei was not able to drive and was not directly involved in the theft of the gift cards and told him he was free to leave,” Officer Salvi said. “Fei cooperated with officers by opening his own bag to show what was inside and I saw no gift cards, only an additional phone than the one he had shown me his passport with. Fei was sent on his way, a tow was requested for the vehicle to remove it from traffic on Lancaster Street.”
Officers Salvi and Vasconcelos inventoried Shi’s car before it was towed. Officer Salvi said that in plain view from the back right window of the vehicle, he could see more white cards inside a large open purse that was behind the passenger seat.
When Officer Salvi removed the purse to document its contents, a brown plastic shopping bag full of gift cards behind the driver’s seat was revealed. Inside the trunk were two more plastic bags full of gift cards.
Shi was transported to the Leominster Police Department.
Officer Salvi interviewed Hannaford’s asset protection investigation specialist over a recorded phone line.
“[The asset protection investigation specialist] informed me that he is aware of groups of Asian males and females in this area that distribute tainted gift cards and steal new ones. [He] has supplied me with the bulletins he received regarding similar cases,” Officer Salvi said. Later adding, “[He] informed me that these cards have been stolen, the UPC codes and security pins are recorded. The ‘tainted’ cards are placed on store shelves and once activated at the register by innocent customers, can be drained of their funds before the innocent customer even has a chance to start their activation process or leave the store. ‘Fresh’ cards are taken in exchange and then tampered with to reveal their pin numbers (3 digit secure pin) and card numbers (UPC Code). [He] advised me that these individuals possess the means to access this information and return the cards to a state that suggests they have never been used.”
When he was back at the station, Officer Salvi requested a copy of the surveillance footage and was sent it by the loss prevention specialist of Hannaford.
Officer Salvi said he observed the following when reviewing the surveillance footage: “YaMei approaches the gift card rack and paces around the three sides of it. She is seen reaching into her black bag and removing a stack of multiple gift cards and then she places them on an empty portion of the rack. She distributes the cards throughout the rack, placing them at the front of other racks to be picked first. She then takes cards from the stack that she placed and begins removing other cards that have not been tampered with. YaMei swaps the tampered cards with cards that have not been touched. Once she has finished distributing the cards she walked in with, she takes stacks of untainted Apple cards from another part of the rack and leaves, passing all points of sale.”
Officer Salvi counted and quantified the gift cards on Shi’s person and from under the passenger seat of her vehicle.
“On YaMei, I recovered 13 cards from one jacket pocket, 21 cards from the other pocket, and 16 cards from the black bag,” Officer Salvi said. “The estimated value of these cards it at least $1,940. An additional stack of eight cards with a value of at least $440 was recovered from under the passenger seat in YaMei’s immediate reaching area.”
Utilizing a translator from “Language Line” the officers explained to Shi her Miranda rights.
“She chose to speak with us regarding the theft of the cards from the Leominster Hannaford’s,” Officer Salvi said. “Upon asking if YaMei had ever done this at another store YaMei invoked her right to end the interview.”
Hannaford’s loss prevention specialist turned in four bags of cards she believed had been tampered with.
“Detective Colon and Officer Vasconcelos were counting the gift cards secured from this incident,” Officer Salvi said. “Multiple cards have a variable value of $10-$500(Apple) and $20-$500(Visa), please note that the minimum value of the cards has not been used to total the value of these gift cards. The estimated minimum loss for the cards in YaMei’s possession totals at least $48,210 when the minimum required purchase value is used.”
The total inventory police took of the stolen gift cards is as follows:
After the cards’ minimum values were quantified, Officer Salvi formally charged Shi with the following (his reasoning is included):
- Shoplifting by asportation (for the surveillance footage of Shi in Hannaford concealing the gift cards on her person and passing all points of sale)
- Attempted larceny (for placing gift cards on the rack with altered UPC codes)
- Conspiracy (Shi and her passenger, Fei Shi, were inside the vehicle that contained the gift cards and both were in the immediate reaching area of their persons)
- Receiving stolen property (it is apparent that the additional cards located in the vehicle during the motor vehicle inventory are evidence connected to previous thefts and similar cases)
- Retail receipt/price tag fraud (by tampering with the UPC codes attached to the cards and obtaining their UPC codes and pins, Shi intended to defraud the retailers [Visa, Apple, and Hannaford] of the funds intended for use by their customers)
- Attempted larceny (second count): (The removal of “fresh” gift cards from Hannaford’s indicates that Shi intended to repeat her process at another store where new customers were subject to the loss of approximately $1,940)
Shi’s bail was set at $10,040.
She was arraigned in Leominster District Court on Nov. 6, 2023.
Disclaimer: If you are wondering why the incident in this story was from November, that’s because I had to file FOIA request(s) to get the court documents for the incident. FOIAs are time consuming.
