A Queens store owner located within 13 blocks of 17 migrant shelters said his business “won’t survive” the rampant thefts he has had to endure since their arrival.
Chris Sciacco, owner of Kaiya’s Pallets at 36-37 31st St. in Long Island City, told The Post that his store is targeted by migrant thieves as many as six times a week.
“It’s not fair that these people can come into my store and steal at will and nothing is done about them,” Sciacco said.
His convenience store is a one-stop-shop that sells food, clothing, electronics and essentials like diapers at wholesale prices — and that’s probably why it’s targeted more often than other retailers in the area. Now, his store makes at least $3,000 a month in profit, Sciacco said.
“This is affecting our business and our operating costs,” he said, adding, “I don’t know if we can continue to survive at this level.”
And if this continues, Sciacco said: “I’m going to break my lease. I’m barely surviving. I don’t know how I’m going to survive like this.”
The 4,500-square-foot store opened in 2021 and in its first year of business, they saw only three thefts — two of which appeared to be committed by homeless people stealing a candy bar or two, Sciacco said.
But since the shelter opened in the past two years, it’s happening almost every day — and “small and large items” are taken on a regular basis, Sciacco said, pointing to three examples in just the past two weeks.
- On Tuesday, a man opened a box containing three bottles of Rogaine, pocketed the bottles — worth $50 in total — and tossed the empty box on another shelf before it ran out.
- Another thief took a bag of children’s underwear this week, stealing half of it and leaving the half-empty bag, which was to be sold in bulk, back on the shelf.
- Surveillance video footage from July 11 shows a man casually walking into the store’s entrance around 11:30 a.m., then shamelessly exiting with a full case of Gatorade less than a minute later.
A few hours after the Gatorade theft, “I called [the NYPD] 6 times, waiting for more than 8 hours and not a single police officer showed up to help me,” Sciacco claims.
“I also tried to stop more than 30 police cars on the road and not one of them stopped to help me or even see what was wrong,” he grumbled.
And Sciacco says he has called the NYPD at least a dozen times over the past year when he saw thieves in his store — but claims no one showed up to investigate, nor did any officers follow up on any of the three theft reports he filed with the 114th Precinct.
When he said he reported his latest theft in person at the police station, an officer allegedly told Sciacco, “‘Well, you should hire security.’”
“So I explained to [the cop]I’m a freelancer trying to survive in this expensive city – I’m not a company that can afford to spend money on that kind of hiring or my business would go bankrupt,” he said.
The thieves also forced Sciacco to change the way he did business.
For example, “We need to start loosening up the underwear here,” he says, pointing to a bin full of men’s underwear, which Sciacco has started selling individually for $1, rather than in bulk, because they are stolen at least once a month.
“The only way to combat theft and loss of everything is to put [it] loosen it and store it within sight, hoping someone won’t steal it [pair] underwear for $1,” he explained.
Because the rampant theft seems to be going unchecked, 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 just don’t care anymore,” said store manager Bobby Valiente, who showed The Post the baseball bat he now keeps behind the register just in case — but, thankfully, never has to use.
As of Friday, there were a dozen perpetrators featured on the public-facing wall.
The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment.
