The owner of a Queens store within 13 blocks of 17 migrant shelters says his business “won’t survive” the rampant shoplifting he’s had to endure since their arrival.
Chris Schiaco, owner of Kaiya’s Pallets at 36-37 31st St. in Long Island City, told The Post that his store is targeted six times a week by migrant shoplifters.
“It’s not fair for these people to come into my store and steal unintentionally and not have anything done about it,” Schiaco said.
Its diverse store is a one-stop shop for food, clothing, electronics and staples like diapers at wholesale prices — and that may be why it gets targeted more often than other retail stores in the nabeto. They are now bleeding at least $3,000 a month, Schiaco said.
“It’s affecting our business and our overhead,” he said, adding: “I don’t know if we can continue to survive at this rate.”
And if that continues, Sciacco said, “I will cancel my lease. I can barely manage. I don’t see how I can continue at this rate.”
The 4,500-square-foot store opened in 2021 and in its first year in business saw just three thefts — two of which appeared to be homeless people stealing a candy bar or two, Schiaco said.
But since the shelters opened in the past two years, it’s been almost daily — and “little things and big things” are regularly taken, said Schiaco, who pointed to three examples in the past two weeks alone.
- On Tuesday, a man opened a box containing three bottles of Rogaine, collected the bottles — which were worth a total of $50 — and dumped the empty box on another shelf before it expired.
- Another thief grabbed a bag of children’s underwear this week, lifted half the pairs and left the half-empty bag, which was supposed to be wholesaled, back on the shelf.
- Surveillance video from July 11 shows a man walking into the store’s entrance around 11:30 a.m., then brazenly walking out with an entire pallet of Gatorade less than a minute later.
In the hours after the Gatorade theft, “I called [the NYPD] 6 times, I waited more than 8 hours and not a single cop showed up to help me,” Schiaco claimed.
“I also tried to stop over 30 police cars on the street and not one stopped to help me or even see what was wrong,” he fumed.
And Schiaco said he’s called the NYPD at least a dozen times in the past year when he noticed a shoplifter at his store — but claims no one came to investigate, nor did officers follow up on any of the three reports for theft, which he filed with the police in the 114th district.
When he said he reported the latest theft in person at the station, an officer told Schiaco, “Well, you need to hire security.”
“So I explained to [the cop]I’m a one-man band trying to get by in this expensive city — I’m not a corporation that can afford to spend money on those kinds of hires or I’ll be out of business,” he said.
The thieves have also forced Sciacco to change the way it does business.
For example, “We had to start offloading the underwear here,” he said, pointing to a container full of men’s boxers, which Sciacco started selling individually for $1 instead of wholesale because it was stolen at least once a month.
“The only way to combat theft and loss of the whole thing is to put [it] loose and keeps it in sight, hoping people don’t steal it [pair] underwear for $1,” he explained.
With no end in sight to the rampant thefts, Sciacco recently started a “Wall of Shame,” where he posts photos of thieves and notes what they stole.
“It just goes to show that, frankly, people don’t care anymore,” said store manager Bobby Valiente, who showed The Post the baseball bat he now keeps behind the cash register just in case — but, thankfully, never had to use.
As of Friday, there were a dozen perpetrators depicted on the wall facing the public.
The NYPD did not return a request for comment.
