Police: Thieves take $15K of merchandise from mall

ATLANTA (FOX 5 Atlanta) - They looked just like all the other holiday shoppers jamming the malls the last full week of Christmas.

But police said the group grabbed hands full of merchandise but never paid.

It was not a smash-and-grab operation. Instead, they casually put items in garment bags they brought to the stores and filled them up, according to Atlanta investigators.

And those bags included an anti-sensor device that allowed them to walk out of the stores but not set off the alarms.

At Lenox, police said they struck Victoria Secret and Brooks Brothers.

Each time their bags got full, they would walk out to the parking lot to unload.

And police said they might have gotten away except for greed, they kept coming back.

One curious clerk noticed the same individuals return to her store but remembered they did not buy anything the first time. She called security.

Police found a total of $15,000 worth of goods.

Taken to jail were Tyiesha Dowdell, Donnie Romale Horn, Fred McConnell, and Brian David Robinson ..