Thessaloniki: 5 years in prison for cleaners who stole goods worth more than 100 thousand euros from brand stores

The Unified Court of Criminal Appeal of Thessaloniki sentenced to five years’ imprisonment four women, members of a cleaning crew, found guilty of systematically stealing goods – clothing, linen and other branded products – with a total value of more than 100,000 euros from four shops on Tsimiski Street in Thessaloniki.

The case was solved at the end of December 2021. The cleaners who finished their shift were detained with bags containing stolen goods. Unbeknownst to themselves, they had been committing thefts since at least September of that year.

The matter began to unravel when store managers (part of the same group) began to notice significant shortages of goods that were not justified by sales volume. Given the large scale of thefts, the possibility of them being committed through the fault of customers or employees was excluded. This was not confirmed by CCTV cameras. Then the cleaners who were detained with stolen goods on them came under suspicion. They worked when stores were closed and removed anti-theft detectors.

According to the case materials, the defendants (of Georgian and Armenian origin) acted during night work and closing of stores. They used scissors to remove anti-theft devices from goods. “Some sensors were found abandoned in the elevator shaft,” said witnesses and store employees, noting that thefts were also recorded from warehouses. According to the same document, the accused were leaving work in a cleaning company’s car, but the investigation did not establish the involvement of other persons.

As a result of a search in the house and on the roof of the house of one of the accused (the only one in custody), goods worth almost 30,000 euros were found, which she admitted stealing. In their statements, her accomplices admitted only that they had stolen goods discovered during their arrest.

According to the court, the defendants united to commit theft on an especially large scale. All of them received a mitigating circumstance in the form of legal life and were released with restrictions pending the consideration of the case in the appellate court. The prosecutor expressed the opinion that the stolen goods “They were sent somewhere, resold somewhere.”

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