Life at the Bar Shoplifting 2

Shop Lifting 2

The modus operandi usually abbreviated to MO of the Duff sisters relied on the similarity in their appearance, despite the age range from seventeen to thirty two. They were of similar height and their hair was cut to the same length, almost grazing their shoulders, and was a dark blonde with silvery highlights. They were similarly proportioned, neither too overweight nor too slim, unless they were pregnant and they wore almost identical clothes. Each of them had at least one small child, and two of the children were mixed race; they would dress the children in very similar clothing. The family acted a lot like a pack of lionesses in the way they cared for their children; it was often difficult to know which one of the sisters was the mother of any particular child.. 

The sisters would go into the stores usually in a group and then split up as they wandered around looking at clothes, making a display of their selection, holding the items up and waving them around to distract the store detectives. Some of the items were then secreted in the back of a pushchair. The one who had taken the clothes would then switch her pushchair with child to another of the sisters, and take that one’s child.

Normally the store detectives would wait until the sister they thought they had seen take something from the shop and hiding it at the back of their child in the pushchair was outside the store. By that time she no longer had the stolen items and could look aghast at being stopped and accused of theft. Sometimes one or other of them would be caught but never all of them at the same time.

That is until CCTV…..