Shoplifting suspect fatally stabs LP associate
A shoplifting suspect fatally stabbed an LP associate in the Burlington store in Woodbridge, Virginia, Saturday before fleeing the scene, according to Prince William County police. Two loss prevention associates at the Burlington store at 2700 Potomac Mills Circle confronted Jamel Carlos Kingsbury, 35, who they observed shoplifting inside the store, police said. After the associates confronted Kingsbury when he exited the store, a struggle ensued, and Kingsbury stabbed one of the associates and fled on foot. Prince William County police arrived to the store at Potomac Mills Mall about 2:30 p.m. and searched the area but could not find Kingsbury.
The LP associate who was stabbed, Larry Donnell Drumgole, 44, was taken to a hospital, where he died as a result of his injuries. The second associate involved in the encounter was not injured. Kingsbury is described as a black man who is 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighing 190 pounds and has black hair and green eyes. Kingsbury was also involved in a “domestic related call” Saturday morning, police said.
Anyone with information on Kingsbury’s whereabouts is asked to contact police at 703-792-6500 or Crime Solvers at 1-866-411-TIPS. [For more: NBC Washington]
Jewelry theft suspect charged while already in jail
A man who allegedly stole $15,666 worth of jewelry from the Cornelius Fred Meyer in January was charged on March 2, deputies said. The Washington County Sheriff’s Department said deputies have been looking for this suspect for more than a month. Marshall Litten allegedly went into the jewelry store on January 19, smashed a display case and ran off with $15,666 worth of gold necklaces.
Deputies saw a booking photo of Litten after he was arrested for a robbery in Beaverton and believed he was the same man seen in surveillance video from the jewelry store robbery. The forensic science unit confirmed Litten was the suspect they were looking for based on evidence from the theft. Litten was already being held at the Washington County jail for the Beaverton robbery case, and was then charged with first-degree theft and criminal mischief for the Fred Meyer theft. He is being held on $280,000 bail. [For more: KOIN]
NY man nabbed for $1M in counterfeit jackets
A Jericho, New York, man was arrested for allegedly selling counterfeit The North Face jackets after investigators seized 20,000 of the coats with a street value of more than $1 million, authorities said. Rahul Biswas, aka Kazi Aziz, was charged with trademark counterfeiting. Judge Joseph Girardi set his bail at $100,000 cash or bond.
Federal agents and investigators with the district attorney’s office seized the jackets after executing search warrants at the 56-year-old suspect’s Old Bethpage warehouse, where the jackets were stored after being shipped from Bangladesh. Investigators also raided the office of his Jericho-based business, TRB Designs and Resources, Inc., where they seized business records and two Bangladeshi passports, one in Biswas’ name and another in an alias, authorities said. Neither he nor his company are authorized distributors of The North Face products, but he sold them to other distributors, according to investigators, who described the jackets as inferior quality and not as warm as the real thing. The counterfeits sell for as little as one third the price of the original. He is due back in court Monday and faces up to five to 15 years in prison, if convicted. [For more: Long Island Press]
Colorado police arrest Maine convenience store manager for theft
The former manager of a New Harbor, Maine, convenience store faces felony forgery and theft charges after she embezzled over $50,000 from the store in 13½ months, according to police. Siarra M. Kear, 23, of New Harbor was arrested in Colorado on Friday, Feb. 24, after more than two weeks at large. She is fighting extradition to Maine, according to Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Michael Murphy. Kear faces one count each of class B forgery and class B theft by unauthorized taking, according to court documents. A class B crime carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
The Aurora Police Department in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, arrested Kear on a warrant out of Lincoln County, according to Murphy. She is in custody at an Arapahoe County jail with bail set at $5,000 cash or surety. Kear was an employee of Dee’s Variety for about six years, according to an affidavit by Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office Detective Scott Hayden. She was the store manager from January 2013 until January of this year.
As store manager, Kear was responsible for ordering, payroll, scheduling and some bookkeeping, according to Hayden’s report. She was also involved with the daily operations of the store. In early January 2017, $3,200 in cash went missing from the store, according to the report. The same day, Kear did not show up for work. Dee contacted her bank to request statements for the last year, and found more than $35,000 in unauthorized checks payable to Kear, according to the report. She also found $3,227.18 in unauthorized charges to a business credit card in Kear’s name. “There are numerous charges to Amazon Video on Demand, Walmart (including a $938.99 charge that Patti found was the purchase of a TV for Siarra’s boyfriend), and also a $425 charge to the Animal Emergency Clinic in Portland,” Hayden said in the report. [For more: Bangor Daily News]
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Yahoo! CEO will give up annual equity, bonus due to security breaches
An update regarding the internal, independent board committee investigation of two massive Yahoo hacks, along with a 10-K financial filing for the company for 2016, reveal a little more about who knew what and when concerning data breaches. According to the filed documents, the affected cookies have since been invalidated. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is among the highest paid CEOs.
Yahoo began warning some customers in mid-February that state-sponsored attackers had accessed their accounts by using the sophisticated cookie forging attack. The chief exec is doing so as a tacit admission of failure following Yahoo’s two separate security breaches revealed previous year that collectively compromised the personal information of more than 1.5 billion users.
Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s Head of Legal Affairs said that he has little to no knowledge about Yahoo’s breach, but he knew that lawyers are very easily blamed for everything. Mayer, a former Google executive, said she would voluntarily turn down her annual bonus and equity grants for 2017 as a result of the incidents. Yahoo’s general counsel, Ronald Bell, resigned without severance pay for his department’s lackadaisical response to the security lapses. Yahoo revealed a year ago that it suffered two security breaches, one in 2014 and one in 2013, that compromised info like names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and cashed passwords. Last month, Verizon Communications, which is in the process of buying Yahoo’s core assets, lowered its original offer by US$350 million to US$4.48 billion. [For more: Ligue1Talk]
National retailers step up the pace of store closures
Retailers are disappearing from shopping centers in Maryland and throughout the United States at a pace not seen in years as familiar brands go out of business or attempt to stay alive by closing some stores. Online shopping has changed how people buy things, and retailers that fall between discount and luxury are struggling the most.
This year alone, at least 13 retailers are closing more than 1,500 stores nationwide. The Limited and Wet Seal — with more than 400 apparel stores between them — have gone the way of Sports Authority and Radio Shack, disappearing altogether. Consumers are visiting stores less frequently and increasingly turning to computers and mobile devices to browse, shop for deals and complete purchases. Such shifts mean retailers need fewer physical stores and less space and inventory at a time when the nation is already “overstored,” experts said.
“It’s going to be a very difficult year,” said Mark Millman, president and CEO of Millman Search Group, a retail consulting and executive search firm. “We are over-retailed. Mall traffic is down in every center. The consolidation will be increasing.” He said his firm is gearing up to help liquidators staff the many going-out-of-business sales that retailers run when winding down operations. “Liquidators are telling me it’s the worst they’ve seen in 30 years,” Millman said. “The numbers of closings are fast and furious.” Store-closing announcements typically come after the dust settles from the crucial holiday selling period and after retailers report and assess end-of-year sales and profits. Many retailers turned in disappointing financial results this past holiday season and are looking to trim costs. Others have chosen not to renew leases when they expire. [For more: The Baltimore Sun]
Amid a sea of store closures, home-improvement retail thrives
The home-improvement sector of commercial real estate tends to fluctuate. It is very reliant on the stability of the housing market, which has been a bit shaky for some time. It can also be counterintuitive. Depending on the economy, the housing market can crash. Then again, if there is a natural disaster, like a hurricane, these chains do well.
Home Depot had a very strong fourth quarter. Same-store sales increased 6.3 percent year over year for stores in the United States. Net earnings also rose to $1.7 billion from $1.5 billion the prior period. Lowe’s fourth quarter was very successful as well. Its comparable-sales results were up 5.1 percent compared to the same period in 2015. Its earnings per share shot up 45.8 percent during the quarter from the prior year. This is a good sign, for the time being, for the home-improvement sector of commercial real estate. Both Home Depot’s and Lowe’s stocks are soaring. This means that retailers in this part of the industry have learned how to adapt.
When Home Depot opened its first store in New York City, it was a pretty big deal. Why would a big-box suburban retailer open in a location that arguably has the most expensive real estate in the world? It probably saw the future before the skeptics. Right now Baby Boomers, and the Millennial crowd, want to live in more urban areas. Everyone likes to talk about Amazon and how it is crushing brick-and-mortar retail. Well, if you live in a city center, which seems to be the trend, and your condo, or apartment, has an issue with your shower head, do you really want to wait around for someone to fix it? Probably not. If home improvement is doing well, it’s a sign that other sectors of commercial real estate are doing well. The industrial sector is one. Home Depot and Lowe’s obviously have a lot of real estate, either leased or owned, that involves each chain’s mega distribution centers. And, as stated above, multifamily is also obviously doing well in urban centers. [For more: SeekingAlpha]
The post Breaking News in the Industry: March 6, 2017 appeared first on LPM.