Demolished cakes, skipped scans and the ‘lost lamb’ act: Inside the brazen world of petty theft at Coles Prahran

It starts with a swift stride to the entrance, then the alarm sounds. The balding man – dark leather jacket, dark eyes – looks around frantically, clutching a basket brimming with beef mince, fruit, mini-muffins, lollies and sliced cheese.

The security guard, bounding over, slams his way through the automated checkout gates, calling out “Are you right, buddy?” before moving into position at the man’s side.

With a mumble of “Oh, OK, sorry” the man begrudgingly bows to being shepherded back to the self-service counters, assuming the expression of a lost lamb and refusing to meet the guard’s eye. But it’s not his first time.

“If you look closely at him, it’s just a few cheap items he’s going to scan,” the security guard tells me. The man unloads his basket slowly, carefully, and when the time comes to pay, runs his hands over his face in frustration as his card repeatedly declines. The grift is up.

He tells the lanky boy with curly blond hair and a red polo shirt he’ll come back to pay after he calls his mum. He walks out, dejected, and doesn’t return.

The Age shadowed retail workers at Coles in Prahran over four hours on Monday, and witnessed seven incidents, including thefts and confrontations.

A security guard handled them, but if he wasn’t there – and not all stores have dedicated security – they would have been left to other staff.

Minutes before the balding man’s arrival, the security guard nods towards a woman in a baby pink hoodie – another repeat visitor. He knows her by name, “Frankie”. She’s one of several who haunt this store, frequently subjecting staff to the nuisance.

She’s clearly mentally unwell and not particularly intimidating, if erratic: a beaded headband rests on the centre of her forehead, and the brand “EliteEleven” is scrawled in blush on her back.

Her MO is asking every customer at the checkout to buy her something. This time around, it’s a girl – alone, wearing a school uniform and backpack – who bends to her request.

After the girl pays for a Snickers bar, the guard asks Frankie whether she’s going to thank her, but she stays mute.

He tells Frankie to leave, and she forces open the checkout gates on her way out. The bang startles me. “[The schoolgirl] was afraid, that’s why she paid,” the security guard says.

Minutes after I arrive at Coles Prahran on this day – its Chapel Street store is among the supermarket giant’s highest-risk in Victoria – another woman fills up two cooler bags with $191 worth of groceries but dumps them in the aisle when she realises she won’t make it out.

“You were here yesterday as well, we know,” the guard calls out to her, as she waves him off and makes for the exit. Her blue hiking backpack looks crumpled and empty.

Later, a man in a black puffer jacket pockets items from a shelf, and acknowledges the security guard as he passes him, thinking the guard hasn’t noticed the theft.

When the guard confronts him at the checkout, the man gets defensive, telling him he’s bleeding and has come straight from hospital. He finishes the conversation with “f--- off”.

Staff are trained to de-escalate. The guard doesn’t chase him out over his couple of stashed chocolate bars.

These thieves are small-time, compared with the organised crime gangs that come through this store. The gangs rip high-value items – such as razors, electric toothbrushes, vitamins, make-up and meat – off the shelves with a single sweep, and roll out trolleys full of the stuff to sell on the black market.

Just this morning, a man tried to make off with $180 worth of baby formula. He started screaming when the security guard caught him loading it into his bag.

The criminal gang problem is so bad that the supermarket has installed little plastic guards to prevent the sweeping motion. In the coming months, it will bring in glass cabinets in this store to lock up valuable products, along with AI cameras to detect when someone removes a bunch of items from a shelf.

Cameras don’t deter a huge majority of thieves, though.

Take the woman with the blue backpack, for example: before she left the store on Monday, one of 50 CCTV cameras caught her digging into a bit of hot chicken.

The security guard caught another man – who was clearly drug-affected, and wearing a piece of silver fabric tied around his head – eating jam rolls in an aisle.

The guard remembers catching another thief a while ago who was eating a block of butter. He didn’t know quite how to react.

Before I leave, a man with a shaved head, covered in tattoos, walks out of the store with what looks like blood pouring from his nose. He’s covering his mouth with his hand, and grinning at his friend as he stumbles out. I’m taken aback when the security guard says: “It’s not blood, it’s cake.”

I walk down aisle two, and find a mutilated black forest cake jammed between rows of peanut butter and Nutella. The man has gone to the effort of taking the plastic off the cake, opening up a separate “happy birthday” candle, placing the candle on top and lighting it – before attacking the dessert face-first.

The cake is topped with cherry jam – what I thought was blood. Soon enough, the staff are joking, “Birthday party in aisle two”, and, “That’s the cherry on top.”

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