She’s already been banned from one New England grocery chain where she shoplifted. She’s not welcome in another where she used thousands of counterfeit coupons. And several other grocery, drug and general merchandise stores are likely to eye her warily if she darkens their doors, as she’s suspected of stealing from them, too.
So 42-year-old Jacqueline White of Taunton, Massachusetts may find it challenging to get her groceries for the next few years. But it’s the price she’s having to pay, after pleading guilty to a counterfeit coupon scheme that cost one grocery chain nearly $27,000.
White received a suspended two-and-a-half year sentence on Friday, after pleading guilty to felony larceny. She can avoid serving out her sentence behind bars, if she stays out of trouble during her three years of probation.
White and accomplice Crystal Travis were indicted back in August 2023, accused of using at least 3,365 counterfeit coupons to steal at least $26,547 worth of merchandise from more than a dozen Stop & Shop stores over a three-month period earlier that year.
Prosecutors said White learned online how to make counterfeit coupons (a collection of coupons she’s accused of creating are pictured above), then “used them at whichever stores fell for the trickery.” She was later joined on many of her shopping trips by Travis, who received 18 months of probation on a larceny charge last year.
Stop & Shop loss prevention began to catch on that they were being scammed, as they discovered stacks of counterfeit coupons that had been accepted by unsuspecting cashiers. In one transaction, prosecutors said White bought 262 items totaling $1,264.99, but she used enough fake coupons to get her total down to just $1.97. In another transaction at a different Stop & Shop just a day earlier, prosecutors said she bought 123 items for $564, and used so many fake coupons that she was credited with $3.50 in overage.
By then, Stop & Shop staffers knew to look out for a couple of serial counterfeit coupon users. At one store, an asset protection officer spotted two women – whom prosecutors later identified as White and Travis – “lingering in the diaper aisle with grocery carts filled with laundry detergent and household cleaning products.” After police were called to check it out, prosecutors said “the defendants lingered inside the store before discarding their grocery carts near the self-checkout aisle and exiting the store’s side door,” abandoning about $1,200 worth of merchandise.
Authorities were able to identify the suspicious shoppers, and both Stop & Shop and the Coupon Information Corporation warned White to stop what she was doing. But “she ignored the warnings and continued stealing thousands of dollars in goods from various stores,” prosecutors said.
In the meantime, she was making her hauls available for sale on social media, with what prosecutors described as “photographs of car trunks and grocery carts stuffed with countless stolen goods.”
Investigators ultimately moved in and brought their case against the two before a grand jury. Their records showed that White “utilized numerous phone numbers, email addresses, debit and credit cards, and addresses” to sign up for at least six different Stop & Shop loyalty cards. Transactions associated with those cards dated back to 2019, and showed the use of more than $100,000 in coupons, leading prosecutors to conclude that White “likely profited for several years from this long-running counterfeit couponing scheme.”
And that was just at Stop & Shop. White had already earned a lifetime ban from Hannaford grocery stores after repeatedly being accused of shoplifting. And prosecutors believed she stole from several other stores as well, including Walmart, Walgreens, Starbucks, Petco, Shaws and CVS.
“The full extent (of) the defendant’s theft will remain unknown,” prosecutors concluded. But they hope nabbing her for $27,000 worth of counterfeits was enough to get her attention, and get her to stop. Before her guilty plea, prosecutors observed that White “seems to suffer from an addiction to shoplifting because despite numerous warnings, ‘close calls’ with law enforcement, and arrests, she continues to steal.”
Doing so now would immediately land her behind bars for two and a half years. So authorities hope her counterfeit couponing days are over. And given how many stores will no longer allow her in – her grocery shopping days might be, too.
Image source: Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office
I’m sure she was addicted to something more than shoplifting lol