The criminal case against a man accused of shoplifting merchandise from Fair Oaks Mall — so he could sell it online — is moving ahead in the legal system. He is Sultan Mohammed Ferozi, 29, of 6825 Ridgeway Drive in Springfield.
BEFORE THE holidays, members of the Fairfax County police Christmas Anti-Theft Team (CAT) were on duty at the mall when they reportedly caught Ferozi in the act of stealing things from two book stores there. As a result, officers seized several thousand dollars worth of pilfered items — plus Ferozi's Mercedes — because, said police, "Much of the stolen merchandise was found in his car."
According to police, Ferozi allegedly swiped books from the Borders Book Store and the Family Christian Books store in the mall, placed them into shopping bags he'd brought with him and then planned to sell them on E-bay for his own profit.
In a Dec. 14 affidavit for a warrant to search Ferozi's home for possible evidence of the crime of grand larceny, Master Police Officer William C. Woolf II presented details of the case. He wrote that, on that date, after police confronted and arrested Ferozi at the mall, they discovered on his person and in his car mailing labels containing people's addresses and titles of books.
"IT APPEARED that Ferozi was using these mailing labels to indicate which books he needed to steal to fulfill his orders," wrote the officer. Woolf then concluded that Ferozi was allegedly "mailing the stolen property to others throughout the United States."
On Dec. 14, police charged him with grand larceny, petit larceny, possession of burglary tools, possession of stolen property and possession of a concealed weapon. He appeared last Wednesday, Feb. 8, in General District Court and, at that time, Judge Ian O'Flaherty certified two counts of grand larceny and the burglary-tools charge to the grand jury for possible indictment. The rest of the charges were dropped.