Woman Arrested in Orihuela for Stealing €30,000 Worth of Clothing and Reselling Online

She stole clothing items from the store where she worked and then resold them through online platforms. This was the modus operandi of a 50-year-old woman who has been arrested in Orihuela. The National Police accuse her of a continuous theft offence after she had been stealing items for years, amounting to €29,692.

The incidents were reported by representatives of a clothing company, who discovered, after an internal investigation, that an employee had been stealing items to sell them later through two well-known online platforms for selling second-hand clothing and items.

This investigation arose after a customer's complaint, who intended to return a clothing item that, according to the store's customer files, had not been purchased, prompting a thorough inventory check.

The investigations led them to an employee who had been working for the company for three years and had been stealing clothing and other items from one of the warehouses to later sell them online.

In fact, they discovered that the shipping labels for the stolen items she sold were printed at the company itself, and they eventually obtained images of the employee putting a store item into her personal bag.

Following the filed complaint, the judicial police officers from the Orihuela Police Station in charge of the case conducted inquiries on the online sales platforms used by the suspect, locating 31 advertised products and up to 208 transactions on one platform, and a total of 878 ads posted on the other platform.

Regarding the items identified by the victims as the company's property and confirmed to have been stolen, they corresponded to a total of 255 ads posted by the suspect, with the sales on the platforms dating back to December 2021, the same date she started working at the store.

Thus, the investigation confirmed that since the suspect began working at the affected company, she set up a sort of "parallel store" on second-hand clothing sales platforms with items from well-known brands stolen from the company, constituting a continuous theft offence as the same criminal action was prolonged over time.

Finally, the suspect was located and arrested as the alleged perpetrator of the reported incidents, and after the police proceedings, she was brought before the local magistrates' court.