A Brooklyn man was arrested earlier this month and accused of stealing crates full of quality fromage, possibly for years, from a kosher food store in Midwood and then selling the goods to neighboring stores. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling cameras!
Steven Schwartz would apparently "come in almost every day—for the last three years," Pomegranate employee Joel Eidliz explained to the Brooklyn Daily. "Everybody knew his face, so nobody thought he [would steal from us]!"
It is unclear how long Schwartz had been swiping from the store, but it appears to have not been a new thing. According to Brooklyn Daily, his trick was this:
the curd coveter would fill up one crate with expensive feta, goat and assorted sliced cheeses and another with milk. Before reaching the checkout line, he would put his milk crate above the one laden with cheese and never reveal — or purchase — the valuable contents hidden underneath.
Schwartz would then turn the cheddar into cheddar: he would pawn the cheeses at neighboring businesses along Coney Island Avenue, local merchants said.
He was finally caught after workers noticed "the dairy devil at work" on surveillance cameras. Police caught up with him at the store on February 8 and charged him with multiple counts of petit larceny. And just like that, a man's dream of the good life financed by sales of stolen cheese curdled before his eyes.
