Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly. Other times, justice can be swift.
In the case of Soud Kanan of Sharon, Pennsylvania, it may turn out to be a little of both.
The 27-year-old Kanan and his wife, 25-year-old Asmaa Kanan, were arrested outside of a Marc’s grocery store in Alliance, Ohio, last month, caught in the act after using hundreds of counterfeit coupons to buy cartloads of Ensure nutrition shakes.
Mere weeks later, they’ve already found out their fates. And it’s not necessarily good news for those who think coupon fraud is serious enough to warrant more than a slap on the wrist. Yet you could consider it good news for those who believe individuals should be held responsible for all of their alleged crimes.
The case against Asmaa Kanan was dismissed, and the felony theft case against Soud Kanan was reduced to a misdemeanor, to which he pleaded no contest. The judge then sentenced him to six months imprisonment, but only required him to serve three days behind bars on the condition he stays out of trouble for the next year. He was also assessed $500 in fines. There was no mention of any restitution, only an order that all of the Ensure must be “confiscated and destroyed or returned to the store.”
Back on June 19th, investigators said the two were shopping at Marc’s and loaded up two shopping carts with dozens of multipacks of Ensure shakes. They said surveillance video showed Soud Kanan using 190 counterfeit coupons to bring a $892.73 total down to just $43.94. Police confronted the couple in the store parking lot and arrested them both.
And this shopping trip wasn’t the first one where these Ensure fans allegedly used fraudulent coupons to get a whole lot of the product for next to nothing. A week before, police said Soud Kanan was at a nearby Meijer, where, according to the police incident report, he “loaded two carts containing 84 packs of Ensure drinks valued at $703.36. At the self-checkout, the defendant created five different transactions, scanning four packs of the drinks at a time. He then scanned four fraudulent coupons per transaction. The remaining 64 packs of drinks were not scanned at all.”
Altogether, police said the couple made off with nearly $1,000 worth of Ensure. And those two shopping trips that these two Pennsylvania residents made in Alliance, Ohio apparently weren’t the only ones.
A day after the Meijer shopping trip in Alliance that police described above, police in nearby Jackson Township said Soud Kanan visited a Meijer there. And now Kanan has been charged with theft yet again. Jackson police say he walked out of the store with 24 six-packs of Ensure valued at $417.62.
Just one day before pleading no contest to the theft charge in Alliance, Kanan pleaded not guilty to the theft charge in Jackson. His next court date in that case is set for next month.
During their investigation, Alliance police said they found hundreds more packs of Ensure in the back of Kanan’s truck, presumably from other recent store visits. So it’s possible that more charges, from more jurisdictions, are in Kanan’s future.
A few days in jail may or may not be enough to convince a convicted coupon counterfeiter to change his ways. A few more criminal charges that may come with even heftier consequences, just might.
Image sources: City of Alliance Police Department
