By the Daily Post staff
Organized thieves frequently hit the lululemon stores in the Stanford Shopping Center and in downtown Palo Alto. On Sunday, police were able to arrest four suspects in such a theft.
Police got a call at 6:02 p.m. from an employee of the store at the mall saying a theft was underway. Police arrived and detained four people with more than 100 pairs of leggings worth a combined $12,000.
During an investigation, police learned there was a fifth suspect, a man who is at large.
Police also found the suspects’ minivan in the parking lot, a blue 2007 Hyundai Entourage. There were several garbage bags full of items inside the minivan containing 300 items of clothing worth $38,000. Police believe they were stolen by the same suspects earlier in the day from lululemon stores in Burlingame and San Mateo.
Police arrested suspects ranging in age from 16 to 22. They are:
• Ionut Grafi Dumitru, 18, of Sacramento.
• Elvira Fistogeanu, 22, of Sacramento, and
• Florentina Izabela Matei, 20, of Carmichael.
The 16-year-old, a girl from Sacramento, wasn’t identified because she is a minor.
The horror! Imagine if they sold those tights to really fat people! The community aesthetics would have been devastated, and many would have suffered severe retainal trauma!
Sounds like there’s some Romanian crime groups in the area.
The pictured suspects are probably gypsies. They often disguise themselves as Indians with small children in tow and beg for money. I see them all the time at malls and farmers’ markets. There’s one who operates near the Safeway on Berryessa Rd. Less-educated, less-worldly Americans (especially older fatuous-faced retirees) think they are Indians (I heard several say it!) which defames the entire Indian-American community. I think Indian-American community leaders need to tell people HEY, IT’S NOT US!
Thank you Padaily post for continuing to bring to light the increasing rates of theft crimes in Palo Alto. This crime increased should not be “normalized”.