Lang
12/4/22
An Iowa City woman faces charges that she threw away a stolen $3,000 merchandise scanner after realizing it wasn’t a cellphone.
Iowa City Police say 40-year-old Rihana Alamin of East Market Street is seen on surveillance video browsing the aisles of CVS Pharmacy in the Old Capitol Town Center just before 12:45pm on November 10th. At one point, she can allegedly be seen taking an Iron Man electronic merchandise scanner and putting it in her purse. The scanner had been left unattended on top of some merchandise.
In a later interview with police, Alamin allegedly claimed she only stole the scanner because she thought it was a cellphone. When she realized it wasn’t, she threw it away inside a mall trash can. When asked why she didn’t just take the scanner back to where she found it, she allegedly said she thought leaving it in the trash was acceptable.
Alamin was booked into the Johnson County Jail earlier this week and charged with 2nd Degree Theft. If convicted, she faces a maximum of five years in prison.