A brazen shoplifter, who proudly steals up to £5,000 a day, is adamant shops going bust isn’t her fault because they ‘should have better security’.
The woman, who goes by the alias of Sarah, boasted how she ‘very rarely’ is caught by police and has never been charged for her shoplifting sprees.
The single mother, who turned to lawlessness after the breakdown of her family, believes stealing upwards of £3,000 worth of goods is a ‘victimless crime’.
Sarah explained that she nabs up to nine full black bin bags of stolen items before auctioning ‘the lot’ to a single buyer.
When pressed about the impact of her actions as shops close their doors due to the growing cost of shoplifting, the criminal said it was ‘their fault’ rather than her own.
‘That’s not my fault, it’s their fault, they should have better security, they should have more staff workers they should be on their job like I am,’ she told Good Morning Britain
‘I am better at my job than they are and that’s the bottom line’
Comparing the crime to a game of Pac-Man, she said: ‘I don’t see myself as a criminal, I am a worker I go out and work.
A brazen shoplifter, who boasts about her three-year long ‘professional’ career has said shops need to be better at their jobs
The single mother, who turned to lawlessness after the break down of her family, believes stealing upwards of £3,000 worth of goods is a ‘victimless crime ‘ (stock image)
When pressed by journalist Richard Gaisford (pictured) about the impact of her actions as shops close their doors due to the growing cost of shoplifting, the criminal said it was ‘their fault’ rather than her own
‘I’m quite proud of how I go out and work. I could become a millionaire tomorrow and I would still go out – it’s the thrill.’
The single mother, who brags about her three-year ‘professional’ shoplifting career, also argued it was a ‘victimless crime’.
‘I believe that. I do think that the company’s losing money but I don’t think there’s a single person, there’s a single victim,’ she said.
‘I’m not hurting anybody, I’m just going and making money. If I get to £3,000 and I am having a good day and I feel as if I can get up to five I will carry on.’
It comes as shoplifting offences have risen by 23 per cent to more than 490,000 a year to hit the highest level since records began, new official figures revealed.
The shocking data is further cements Britain’s worsening retail theft epidemic, which an industry body has previously warned was ‘out of control’.
There were a total of 492,914 offences recorded by police in the year to September, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) found – the highest figure since current police recording practices began for the year ending March 2003.
MailOnline recently obtained CCTV footage from shop owners in Surrey that reveals brazen thieves casually stealing hundreds of pounds worth of stock before fleeing with full bags.
Police recorded 1.8 million theft offences in the year to September, a two per cent increase driven by shoplifting and a 22 per cent rise in crimes involving theft from a person (146,109). Knife offences and robberies rose by four per cent each.
A man shoving luxury candles into an empty Waitrose bag in the nearby town of Hersham
In another piece of footage, this time from Oxted, a man can be seen squatting down and hurriedly shoving four candles into an open Sainsbury’s bag
Serial shoplifterThomas McDonagh, 22, and Martin Stokes, 23, targeted Next and Boots stores in Colchester and Chelmsford, Essex, in January 2025
Thomas McDonagh (pictured) was jailed for 16 months and banned from all Boots stores in Essex. Stokes was given a 16-week sentence, suspended for 18 months
It comes amid warnings that shoplifting is ‘spiralling out of control’ after a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) suggested there were more than 2,000 incidents a day, with staff facing assault, being threatened with weapons, and racial and sexual abuse.
There were more than 55,000 incidents of theft per day, equating to more than 20 million in total.
The alarming figures show the issue is getting worse, with cases of attacks and shoplifting beating last year’s record numbers to be a fresh high since the surveys began in 2001.
This is despite businesses paying a record £1.8billion on prevention tactics such as CCTV, more security guards and body worn cameras.
Some 61 per cent of retailers say the police response to calls for help has been ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’.
Retailers are reporting unprecedented levels of violence towards their staff, with the number of incidents involving a weapon more than doubling to 70 per day.
As a result, the industry group reiterated calls for attacks on shop staff to be made a specific offence in England and Wales, as it is in Scotland.
Labour has promised to do this in the upcoming Crime and Policing Bill, which the industry is hoping will be introduced in the coming weeks.
