Fort Walgreens

The recent spike in shoplifting is both overblown and real. And almost everyone is profiting from it (including you).

- JAMES D. WALSH

JUST ABOUT ANY BOOSTER hanging around the Diamond District a few years ago knew Roni Rubinov’s pawnshop, New Liberty Loans. Rubinov wasn’t the only fence who would buy stolen goods and resell them online, but he had a reputation for taking pretty much anything a shoplifter could bring him: Rolexes, baby formula, condoms, boxed chocolate, prom dresses, K-cups, Amazon gift cards. He’d even buy food stamps. Once, a booster offered him a box of pens he’d found in a trash can. Rubinov bought it.

Most often, though, boosters sold Rubinov cosmetics pinched from pharmacy chains. On any given day, they would head to Duane Reade or CVS or Rite Aid, sweep an armful of creams—L’Oréal, RoC, No7—into a pillowcase, and leave. In and out in 60 seconds. Occasionally, some poor sales associate or “loss-prevention specialist” would attempt to scare the culprit, but company policy often prevented their doing much more. Cosmetics in tow, boosters would head to 47th Street near Sixth Avenue, where they were greeted by New Liberty Loans’ soot-stained marquee: we buy gold & . 2 floor. Up the stairs, past Rubinov’s pawnshop, through a room cluttered with gold testers, money counters, and precision scales, and up a back staircase, they would arrive at Rubinov’s second office, a room he kept for the bounty his legion of thieves brought him. Sometimes there would be a line because boosters came back two or three times a day.

“He was doing that shit like he was operating a completely legitimate business,” said Jerard “Italiano” Iamunno, 39, who boosted for Rubinov on and off for years. “There were other operations out there, but nobody did it like Roni. Because nobody was as greedy as Roni.”