FORT LAUDERDALE With a taste for toys, a penchant for travel and a supportive mother, a Tamarac man stands accused of roaming the globe to shoplift thousands of items that were sold for millions over the past 10 years, investigators say.
Ignatius "Michael" Pollara, 46, and Margaret Pollara, 70, were arrested Thursday and charged with more than a dozen counts of grand theft and petit theft just for laws broken in Florida since June 1, according to the Broward Sheriff's Organized Retail Crimes Unit.
But Michael Pollara plied his trade around the world, and Sheriff's Sgt. Rich Rossman said he showed no remorse.
"He made it a goal of his to steal from all 50 states within one year, which he was very proud of and he did accomplish," Rossman said.
Pollara had a system.
He, his mother and another man would enter a store, grab an affordable item in a big box, empty it and hide the contents elsewhere in the store. He would then fill the large box with smaller, more expensive items, seal it with tape and go through the checkout, paying the cheaper price on the large box, investigators said.
"The term for this is 'box stuffing,'" Rossman said.
On July 12, Michael Pollara went to a Toys R Us store in Naples and bought a Mega Bloks Play 'n Go Table for toddlers. It comes in a big box and costs between $45 and $50. After he left, loss prevention employees checked the store's inventory and discovered two Mindstorm Lego sets, worth $330 each, were missing, Toys R Us investigator Patrick Fairley reported.
The next day, two Mindstorm Lego sets were listed on Pollara's eBay websites; Fairley bought one of them. Pollara shipped it to Fairley in Houston; Fairley sent it to Florida, where it was placed into evidence, Rossman said.
Fairley also spent $19.99 on a Mickey Mouse iXL computer game that retails for $24.99. It was also sent to Florida via Texas. The package had Michael Pollara's Tamarac address on the return label, Rossman said.
Michael Pollara's eBay/Paypal records revealed he did online business as Linemart and Buymart-USA. His Linemart account had received $203,758 and his Buymart-USA account had taken in $706,118 over the years, court records showed.
"He considered it an art," Rossman said. "The art of stealing."
Pollara was pretty smug about it, too.
During police questioning, Pollara said "he wanted to personally thank CVS for paying for his vacation to Hawaii in February, which is consistent with his passport," Rossman said. "[Shoplifting] supports his travel around the world."
Toys R Us and CVS Pharmacy were two of hundreds of retailers Pollara targeted, Rossman said.
"[One] particular trip he was on lasted three weeks," Rossman said. "He drove 7,900 miles from Tamarac all the way to North Dakota and back, impacting retailers throughout the country."
But Pollara had little to show for 10 years of daily shoplifting, according to bank records.
He spent most of his money traveling and tried his system overseas, but not as often, Rossman said.
"He [had] stolen internationally and that somewhat scared him, because international law isn't exactly like America," he said. "If you steal there you could lose your hand, and he didn't think that was the wisest decision."
Pollara had been arrested locally several times in the past, but because shoplifting is typically treated as an isolated incident, it was difficult to recognize a pattern, Rossman said.
Stealing wasn't enough for Pollara he was looking for frequent shopping perks, too, Rossman said.
"One of the things he would do was he would use a reward card," Rossman said. "Obviously, for his small-ticket item, he still wanted to get his reward points and that was his downfall."
Fairley was able to track the reward cards' usage.
Since May 9, Fairley discovered Pollara had visited 139 Toys R Us stores in 27 states, spending a total of $6,737.94 on 175 purchases, according to Pollara's loyalty card records.
"Without a doubt this is the most prolific booster the term for a shoplifter that we've ever come across," Rossman said.
Michael Pollara was being held on $300,000 bond in the Broward County Jail. Margaret Pollara's bond was set at $29,100. At least one more arrest is expected.
More than $30 billion worth of merchandise is shoplifted nationally and more than $100 million worth is stolen in Florida annually, according to National Retail Security surveys.
"It impacts everybody and that's why we pay higher prices because of people like this," Rossman said. "The financial impact obviously has to get passed on and it gets passed on to the consumer."
