Crime & Safety

Woman Nabbed in $500 Boscov's Shoplifting Spree, Police Say

A Lower Nazareth Township woman is accused of going on a $500 Saturday night shopping spree at Boscov's in Palmer Park Mall – and putting the jewelry, clothes and cosmetics inside her purse and walking out without paying.

Written by Jack Tobias

A Lower Nazareth Township woman is accused of going on a $500 Saturday night shopping spree at Boscov’s in Palmer Park Mall – and putting the jewelry, clothes and cosmetics inside her purse and walking out without paying.

Court records say Jennifer Lynn Torbey, 41, of 4387 Newburg Road placed six pieces of jewelry, four clothing items, one bottle of perfume and a cosmetic item inside her purse and walked out of Boscov’s.

A store loss-prevention official stopped her outside the store. The items allegedly inside her purse were worth $497. She was in custody when Palmer police arrived around 8:45pm.

The loss-prevention official told township officer John Charles Billiard that he watched Torbey, who was with a man, on surveillance cameras starting around 8:10pm in the jewelry department.

A criminal complaint filed by Billiard says nothing more about the man.

The complaint also says:

Torbey took some jewelry, put it in her purse and went to the cosmetics department, where she concealed a J’adore perfume tester inside her purse.

She then went to a clothing section and took a Steve Madden Infinity Scarf. Then she went to the men’s department and took a pair of Timberland socks.

Then she went to the “misses” department, where she took two articles of clothing, then back to cosmetics for an item of Lancome makeup.

The complaint says Torbey has one prior retail theft conviction – she pleaded guilty in 2000 to an incident in the Lehigh County borough of Coplay.

Torbey was arraigned on a charge of retail theft around 1am Sunday by on-duty District Judge Robert Hawke of Lehigh Township and committed to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $5,000 bail.


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