RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif. — Several family-owned liquor stores in Sacramento are coming together in an attempt at finding the people they say are stealing thousands of dollars in alcohol.
They said they're being targeted by women who come in wearing long skirts and are hiding cases of liquor in them. Many of the thefts have been caught on camera.
"You can see the women taking bottles off the shelves, putting them in their skirts right here, so you'll see they're just going at it. Taking bottles from up, bottom," said Jas Jit Gill, the son of the owners of Sunrise Food & Liquor in Gold River.
Surveillance video shows how a man and two women wearing large skirts stole about $10,000 to $12,000 worth of liquor from their store.
It happened in December in a span of about 10 minutes as the man distracted his father by asking questions about expensive scotch.
The entire thing was caught on camera as the suspects walked down the aisle. At one point, they even look up to a Ring camera, which caught their faces.
"The women had kind of gone into the scotch aisle and started picking up bottles, high dollar bottles in boxes, and putting them down their skirt or frock where they had modified it to have like a pocket in there so they were just dumping a bunch of products. Emptying out whole shelves," said Gill.
He said the women went to the car and waited for the man to return before taking off.
Gill reported the theft and gave the video to the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office.
Then, on Saturday, the manager of 1 Stop Food & Liquor in Orangevale also said his family was targeted in the same way.
"Like one case of the Hennessey, the big size one... gallon they picked up the whole thing and put it in there. The whole case. There's six bottles in there. And they got a case of Remy Martin from us. There's 12 bottles in there. Put the whole thing down there. They got a whole case of Patrón," said manager Manraj Grewal, manager of his parent's 1 Stop Food & Liquor.
The family is now rearranging the layout of the store so they can have a better view of any thieves.
Both stores are pleading with their community for help in finding the suspects and alerting other owners who could possibly be their next target.
"If you see these people on the streets or anywhere, just alert the police. That's the best thing we can do at this point. There's a lot of us and not too many of them. They are causing ruckus where it's hurting the good people," said Gill.
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office said it's aware of at least two of these incidents and said it's investigating. They're asking other businesses that may be included to make a report too.
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