Six people — all Morrisville College students — were arrested and more than two dozen criminal charges issued last week when Cazenovia village police closed out a months-long investigation into a series of thefts at Tops grocery store in Cazenovia.
According to police, 18-year-old Mikayla Mazur, of Camillus, a Tops cashier and Morrisville College student, was allowing her friends to come through her checkout line with beer, food and household items, scanning the items and then deleting the sales. Her friends would then walk out of the store with the items as if they had been purchased, but without paying for anything.
The thefts, worth hundreds of dollars of groceries, occurred this past May. Village police investigated the incidents throughout the summer, but had to wait until Morrisville College classes started for fall semester, and students returned to the area, this month before they could interview all the suspects in the case, said Cazenovia Police Chief Michael Hayes.
On Sept. 12, police arrested five people involved in the case and charged them all with one or more counts of petit larceny: Jordan K. Shiffer, 19, of Pine Grove, PA; Mary-Ellen Wiley, 19, of Whitesboro, NY; Jacquelynn V. Gott, 19, of Cazenovia; Samantha L. Martin, 19, of Edmeston, NY; and Levi Cooke Gibbs, 19, of Andover, NJ.
On Sept. 18, police arrested Mazur and charged her with six counts each of conspiracy in the sixth degree, petit larceny and falsifying business records; they also charged her with four counts of giving or selling alcohol to persons under age 21.
“We put a lot of work into this with the Tops loss prevention team to ensure all parties involved were arrested and Tops gets reimbursed,” Hayes said.
Jason Emerson is editor of the Cazenovia Republican. He can be reached at [email protected].
