A 72-year-old Villager who was previously arrested for skip-scanning ribeye steaks at a local Walmart is facing numerous new charges after loss prevention identified a monthslong pattern of theft at the store.
Sherri Ann Cohen, of the Village of Osceola Hills, was arrested again Friday at her home on Tuscaloosa Path by Sumter County sheriff’s deputies. She faces a slew of new misdemeanor charges of second-degree petit theft.
The new charges stem from an extensive review of surveillance footage by loss prevention personnel at the Walmart Neighborhood Market at Sarasota Plaza. Following her initial arrest, a loss prevention officer reviewed Cohen’s past transactions and discovered she had allegedly been skip-scanning and ticket-switching items on a routine basis between early April and mid-June.
According to the arrest reports, Cohen frequently swapped barcodes at the self-checkout aisles, ringing up expensive meats and household goods as much cheaper items. For example, surveillance video showed her ringing up salmon, pork belly, and ground beef as sirloin roast. In other transactions, she rang up a box of cleaning supplies as a $1 toothbrush holder, Truvia sweetener as a salsa bowl, and Air Wick plug-in refills as a stick of Dove deodorant.
She also routinely shorted the store on produce, ringing up bags of sweet onions as bananas, or manually entering fewer quantities of fruit on the self-checkout screen than she actually placed in her bags.
In other instances, she simply left large items — such as 84-ounce bottles of Tide laundry detergent and 12-packs of Charmin toilet paper — in her cart and walked past all points of sale without ever attempting to scan them.
In each of the nine newly identified incidents, Cohen completed her transaction for a fraction of the actual cost and departed the store in a white SUV registered to her husband.
Cohen, who was originally arrested on June 14, was booked for the second time this month at the Sumter County Detention Center and released after posting $6,500 bond.