A shoplifter was arrested while waiting to board his Turkish Airlines flight after stealing a wallet from a Coach store at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). You really do have to wonder what would possess someone to steal something so blatantly and then make up a story so outlandish…
Airport Shoplifter Casually Tries To Steal Coach Wallet in DFW, Gets Busted
A man stopped by a Coach store in Terminal D of DFW before his Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul. Oddly, he asked for a second box when paying for his single item. After he left, the store clerks noticed that a wallet was missing, verified on (4K) camera he had clandestinely placed it in his bag, and then alerted airport police.
The police located the passenger at the gate for the Turkish Airlines flight and asked him some questions. He claimed:
- The clerk had given him the wallet for free as an incentive for buying a second item (which he did pay for)
- He comes from a good family (#caste_matters) and would never steal
But there were just too many inconsistencies. First, Coach doesn’t have a policy of haggling or giving free items away. Second, the security footage unmistakably showed him placing the wallet in his bag while the clerk was out of eyesight. You would think that if the wallet really was a freebie, it would be handed to him by the clerk and placed in a Coach bag, not secretly placed in his backpack.
The store clerk was left with a choice: let him pay for the second wallet or press charges. She opted to press charges. Consequently, the man was not permitted to board his Turkish Airlines flight and was arrested.
To his credit, the man did not suffer a meltdown (as others have done at DFW). While maintaining his innocence, he remained (relatively) calm. The incident happened in January 2024 and it is not clear what happened to him.
My only question is who thinks they can get away with theft at a luxury goods store in 2024? Look up! There are cameras everywhere. And while I was hard on one particular DFW Police Officer recently in a drunk passenger incident, I think the police handled this incident very well and I greatly appreciate that they take theft seriously…as they should.
I suspect this young man is back home, but likely unwelcome in the USA in the future. At least I hope so…
image: DFW Police Airport body cam
He got mixed up, thought he was in San Francisco. Too bad for him he was in Texas LOL
No, lucky for him in TX he didn’t get shot by police or get bussed to NYC.
Would have been justified
Being in Texas he was lucky not to get billy clubbed then read his rights.
Actually… the felony theft threshold in Texas is $2500, which is much higher than California’s $950.
The shoplifter was fortunate Texas Gov. Abbott was not the salesperson. Abbott lost all credibility by dishonestly offering up invention and lies immediately following the Uvalde school shooting when the facts were unknown. But in his invention, Abbott claimed the police rushed in and saved dozens of lives. Video evidence proved otherwise. Like the thief and Abbott, video doesn’t lie in Texas. But the governor does.
I think the #caste_matters remark was wholly inappropriate and disgusting. I expected better from you and for you to not make snide remarks on the basis of his race/ethnicity
Sorry, I just watched the movie Origin and have been thinking a lot about the Dalits this week and the caste system itself.
Who argues that “I come from a good family” when trying to deny that they shoplifted? It’s baked into the system…sorry if you find that distasteful. I find it fascinating.
I see where you’re coming from but would you have mentioned this if he was white? Origin discusses caste in all kinds of contexts, not just in India. Similarly, you can use “good family” in many contexts and cultures, including ones distant from the ancient Indian caste system (think Korea, for example). I think you might be jumping to conclusions here.
@Arandomavgeek: I may be jumping to conclusions, but I would also attack that “good family” defense had the culprit been red/yellow/black/white.
Matthew,
You are not jumping into conclusions. He was invoking “good family” as a caste thing. you called it right. Context matters here and you called it right.
source: Am Indian.
How do you know he’s not a Dalit? Caste is complex and infects all parts of south Asian society, including Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs, and is not fundamentally different from other social hierarchies present in the West. It just manifests differently. I’ve seen many people say in America say they don;t do X,Y, or Z because they come from a good neighborhood. Or more common in this country are comments that those people must have done X, Y, and Z because they come from those neighborhoods or have those physical characteristics.
How does good family translate to caste? It is about values or wealth. Not caste you Hinduphopbic ignorant man (I assume your gender is male)
LOLZ.
I don’t think it’s really baked into the caste system as much as it’s baked into how people around the world tend to be biased.
I find that people in authority and positions of privilege tend to often take a more favorable approach to those from “a good family” in terms of wealth, power or fame of a person or a household member from such a “good family” than they would if someone is seen as being poor and from a poor, high-crime ghetto type area. And I see this same kind of dynamic everywhere I have lived or worked when dealing with host country governmental authorities. And that includes quite the variety of countries — including some European ones with constitutional monarchs as head of state — but also India.
“Who argues that “I come from a good family” when trying to deny that they shoplifted?”
The repeated statement of “I am from a good family” and repeated attempts to support and further validate that claim may not be quite as direct an invocation of caste per-se, as they are signals that he is trying to send to the folks running the store and the police, based on how things work in his normal environment.
In certain parts of the world, the police are far less interested in actually arresting someone from a prominent family, particularly not over something as petty as shoplifting. Police in those places know that by arresting him they’ll face pressure and scrutiny, and may lose their job– whereas if they facilitate a resolution to the issue, they likely get a nice gratuity and an ally who has social ranking.
Similarly, for the shop workers, the message being sent, without saying it openly is both “you don’t want to mess with me” and “I have the means to make this right with you, without police involvement”.
The major miscalculation for him though is, he’s in a totally different environment.
Think about Indian PM Modi also, who too is from backward caste and the woman President who too is tribal caste and the previous president who was a dalit. Caste is European construct which they just reflected on Indian society. India had so called dalit caste Kings (read Dogras who belongs to so called backward caste). It was all fluid, that the greatest religions epics Ramayan and Mahabharata were written by monks who belonged to dalit caste while kids and later learnt to became brahmins (so called upper caste). Following divide and rule, caste was frozen by Bristish in first census in 18th century.
I don’t think Matthew’s comment is inappropriate at all. An Indian citizen claiming he “comes from a good family” naturally implies that folks born into “good families” aren’t capable of crimes.
I think it implies the following two things: that socio-economically better off persons are less likely to be arrested and found guilty of crimes than those who are way less socio-economically advantaged; and that he thinks his family is socio-economically better off than average (somewhere).
“I suspect this young man is back home, but likely unwelcome in the USA in the future.”
No “welcome” needed. He can stroll in across the wide-open southern border at any time of his choosing.
Or he’ll apply for international student status in Canada then smuggle his way to the USA.
The upstate NY area bars and restaurants used to have more than a few illegal workers from Europe — including quite the group of Irish deportees — who would come over from Canada into the US to work without legal authorization from the federal government. I would find the northern US border to still be more easily crossed irregularly than the southern US border.
“ My only question is who thinks they can get away with theft at a luxury goods store in 2024? ”
The anti business Biden DOJ of course. By attempting to block the purchase of Capri by Coach parent Tapestry. Theft of stockholder value and theft of the free enterprise system.
As for what happened to him? Thinking Aaron bailed him out in exchange for some forbidden Turkish love in a bathroom stall.
Yeah, I walked into that one considering all the “smash and grab” incidents here in California.
But please dude, lay off Aaron. Or else you two just go get a room somewhere. You can bottom. 😉
10-4 no problem, and I have recently. As I stated before, I ignore him until he starts on me, then I come back harder.
And not in the harder way he likes.
BURN!!!!!
In Jersey usually it’s the parent of a bad kid yelling at their kid, “What are you trying to corrupt that kid for? He comes from a good family?!”
HE SAID THAT HE BELONGS TO HIGH CASTE FAMILY IN INDIA..
May be from Arab Terrorist country, who knows Mr Laden.
Assuming he was convicted and there is a record, and he is Turksish citizen, then that criminal record here may result in his inability to get a visa fto the US or some period of time.
I think he was Indian, but that’s just a guess.
He’s not Turkish.
The Ten Commandments ought to be required reading for everyone , and we would then help each other and ourselves . This was unheard of when I was a youngster .
People did not steal things when you were young?
Wallet was worth $125. In NYC, folks have stolen more than that (but less than $1000) and just get a misdemeanor.
The difference is that Texas actually prosecutes misdemeanor theft unlike California
Great story. I went into the Coach store 4 days after this was on YouTube and told the employees I saw what happened. They played it off at first but then acknowledged what happened.
I think the kid got nervous. If he immediately confessed and gave the wallet back or paid for it he would likely would have been on his way.
Being a male Chauvinist and attempting to lunge forward at the employee after a horrible attempt of gaslighting was throwing fuel to the fire.
He refused to take responsibility for his wrongdoing and it’s a sign of bad family upbringing or of his being such an arrogant mess that he doesn’t care about the difference between right and wrong and is willing to try to push any and every excuse under the sun to try to avoid accountability. It’s a good thing he was arrested and I hope he learns something from being prosecuted and found guilty (if found guilty).
@GU … +1 .
Good riddance. We don’t need students like him here when college admissions are so competitive for our own students.
Your posts are becoming more of click baits like VFTW with no meaningful travel content.
Kyle is way better blogger than you . May be you should focus on your other business and let Kyle run this blog.
Appreciate the unsolicited advice!
You keep mentioning Turkish Airlines but obviously the guy is Indian.
What make it so obvious he’s Indian? What is to say he’s not Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Nepali, Malaysian, South African. East African, Burmese (national), Mauritian, Jamaican, Trinidadian, or wherever else (including Hong Kong and Japan) where some people of South Asian descent come from and may have an accent like him when speaking English? Just curious as someone who hasn’t cared to check out his name or arrest-related history and go from there to try figure out what is his country of citizenship or even country of origin.
He identifies himself as a Sikh, which is a religion originating from the Punjab region of India. It is highly likely that he is also from there due to the low amounts of Sikhs present in other South Asian countries. It is a perfectly valid to assume he is Indian. Makes sense?
I have close Sikh friends in over a dozen countries. Some of them haven’t had a single ancestor born in India for over 120 years and weren’t born there themselves either. Even some of the ones born in India haven’t had a single ancestor from any part of the Punjab in over 250 years. There are lots of Sikhs who are not Punjabi, even as the religion was founded in the region.
Sikhism was in many ways founded as a religion in reaction to and opposed to casteism. Compared to the other major religions in the world, it’s a more egalitarian religion and very different than Hinduism and any of the religions founded in India before Islam came to the Indian Subcontinent.
People in Texas apparently don’t understand how recording works. This man is an example, so are the DPS officers attacking and arresting the local reporter on the UT campus. A third example is university president Jay Hartzell not knowing what a screenshot is.
‘Good family’ has nothing to do with caste.
He totally should be punished for theft. But ‘good family’ in India just means the family in which not even a single family member (including aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) has ever been too involved with illegal stuff in their entire life.”
English is not his first language, obviously, and he is literally translating a Hindi/Urdu term to English and saying it ‘good family’.
No wonder Americans don’t know even 1% about the rest of the world but love to comment on everything.
I know all about your system, chump. Hence, I struck a nerve.
You’re such an ignorant article writer, yet you claim to know about the system. This thief got what he deserved, but you are just sensationalizing and portraying a culture in bad light by using the “good family” remark in a bad context…., but what better to expect from a supremist male who has mostly lived his life in a deep well and only gets informed through alt western media outlets.
LOL. Hail Bharat.
https://liveandletsfly.com/air-india-pilot-shoplifting/
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/tsa-agent-security-stealing-miami-b2418433.html
God Bless people who fly there.
High Caste, Low Caste and Dalit is a Hindu issue. The suspect is a sikh.