The man at the centre of a multimillion-dollar crime ring that stole items from Shoppers Drug Mart and resold them on Amazon won’t serve any jail time, as long as he follows a list of court-appointed rules.
Satnampal Chawla pleaded guilty to trafficking stolen property, after Halton Police orchestrated the biggest police takedown ever at Shoppers Drug Mart, dismantling an organization that had been stealing from 148 locations across Ontario in 2022.
On Wednesday, an Ontario Court judge handed him an 18-month conditional sentence, which includes house arrest for the first six months and a curfew for the following six months.
“I assure you, it could have been much worse,” Justice Brian Puddington told Chawla on Wednesday.
Over several months in 2022, police tracked a group of 10 people who are believed to have stolen more than $1 million in a series of 1,000 thefts at Shoppers locations across Ontario.
The group of 10 used the same technique, exploiting what Puddington described as a “major design flaw” with the self-checkout machines at Shoppers.
The thieves scanned expensive items, like electric toothbrushes, heart monitors and teeth-whitening kits, through the self-checkout, then inserted a bank card. But instead of paying, they hit cancel, and the machine printed out an itemized cancellation record that looked a lot like a receipt. When the security alarms went off at the exit, the thieves just waved the paper to assure staff there’d been a mistake.
Police watched the thieves make deliveries to Chawla, who was operating out of a Brampton warehouse. Chawla sold the stolen goods on Amazon, under the company name Buynsel, according to an agreed statement of facts in the case.
“Thieves like Mr. Chawla make life that much more difficult,” Puddington said in his decision on Wednesday. The cost of the thefts would ultimately trickle down to consumers, at a time of high inflation, making it even harder for people to afford essentials, “while Mr. Chawla profits off their misery,” Puddington said.
Puddington told Chawla the crime “could, frankly, justify a jail sentence.” But both the Crown and defence recommended a conditional sentence instead, and the judge agreed, in part because Chawla’s guilty plea spared the justice system from a complicated trial.
Crown attorney James Coppolino told Puddington that the trial would have gone on for weeks, with dozens of witnesses. One of the challenges, he said, would have been proving that merchandise seized from Chawla’s warehouse was the same merchandise that was stolen from Shoppers Drug Mart.
The stolen items didn’t have serial numbers to help trace them back to specific stores. Chawla’s warehouse was also storing legitimately purchased products, which would have added more complexity to a trial, Coppolino said.
In the case, police saw the Shoppers thieves meet with Chawla and hand over bags. Coppolino, however, said it would be difficult to prove without a doubt that the bags contained stolen goods, or that the Chawla was directing the thieves on what to steal during the meetings.
Puddington, however, noted the case involved “great police work” and the Crown likely would have been able to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Puddington said he also considered the fact that Chawla expressed remorse, had no criminal record, and is currently starting a new career as a real estate agent.
“You are being given an opportunity here,” the judge said.
Defence lawyer Jag Virk told the court that Chawla wasn’t a lifelong criminal. Before starting his Buynsel business, Chawla operated a Freedom Mobile franchise. And at the beginning, Buynsel was only selling legitimate products, before “unfortunately” starting to sell stolen ones as well, Virk said.
Chawla also forfeited nearly $2 million in cash and property that had been seized in police raids, Virk said last week.
“He is extremely remorseful.”
Big-box chain executives and investigators say the case is only one example of a much larger problem in the Canadian retail industry, where groups of sophisticated and brazen thieves are stealing millions in goods and reselling them to unsuspecting customers online. Dean Henrico, vice-president of asset protection for Shoppers parent company Loblaw, told the Star last year that light penalties in these cases encourage more thefts, because it’s seen as “very low risk and high reward.”
“In five years, we’ve seen a 228 per cent increase in theft in our stores,” Henrico said in an interview in December. “The sophistication is unprecedented. We’ve never seen this in Canada.”
