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Macy's Staff Taunts Hijab-Wearing Shopper Falsely Accused of Theft: Suit

By Maya Rajamani | June 30, 2016 12:33pm
 Macy's in Herald Square.
Macy's in Herald Square.
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Flickr/Stacey Huggins

GARMENT DISTRICT — A woman wearing a hijab was falsely detained by Macy's staff who suspected her of shoplifting, mocked for wearing the traditional Muslim veil and forced her to fork over $500 for the alleged crime, a lawsuit charges.

The latest allegations, in a suit that accuses Macy's of targeting and imprisoning minority customers at its stores while extorting cash, come as a judge ordered the retail giant this week to stop the practice of fining accused shoplifters while they are being detained at its stores.

Samya Moftah, 53, an Egyptian-American Upper West Side resident, went to Macy’s Herald Square to exchange a few shirts for different sizes in July 2015, the suit says.

After she couldn’t find the sizes she needed, she said she decided to keep them to give as gifts to family members in Egypt.  

She picked out five new items and bought them at a checkout counter using a Macy’s credit card, but as she was leaving the store, a Macy’s employee dressed in plain clothes grabbed her arm, accused her of stealing something and escorted her to an office, the filing says.

Two employees then brought her to a detention cell in the basement and patted her down, she claimed.  

“One of the female employees told [the other employee] in a mocking tone to, 'see what is under that scarf!' referring to the hijab I was wearing on my head,” Moftah wrote in the filing.

Moftah was also forced to sign documents without reading them, she said.

“At this point in time I didn’t know what else to do except to start crying,” she wrote. “This was the middle of Ramadan and I was fasting, and I felt weak, dizzy, overwhelmed.”

One employee “taunted” her for being “Muslim and stealing on Ramadan,” she claimed.

After five hours in the cell, Moftah said she agreed to hand over the $100 she’d been told she would have to pay, at which point an employee told her she actually owed $500.

She paid the $500 with her credit card, at which point police escorted her to a police station, where she was charged with petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, the filing shows.

In March, a court dismissed the criminal charges against her, but Moftah has become “depressed and increasingly anxious,” and isolated from friends and family as a result of the incident, she said. 

Moftah's attorney Faruk Usar filed an amended complaint two months later, seeking to make Moftah the second plaintiff in a suit claiming Macy’s is running a "money collection scheme" by imprisoning patrons in store holding cells and forcing them to pay fines

In December, New York City resident Cinthia Carolina Reyes Orellana, 29, sued the retailer claiming security guards at Macy’s Herald Square kept her in a holding cell and forced her to pay a $100 fine after accusing her of stealing two shirts — a charge she was cleared of a year later, the suit says.

On Monday, State Supreme Court Justice Manuel J. Mendez granted the woman’s request for a preliminary injunction barring Macy’s from requesting, collecting or accepting payment from customers while they are detained in the store on suspicion of shoplifting.

He also approved Moftah as a plaintiff in the suit.

“After scores of racial profiling lawsuits [and] two Attorney General investigations… the Manhattan Supreme Court finally put a stop to Macy’s department store’s disturbing loss prevention money collection practices,” Usar Law Group, the firm representing Orellana, said in a statement.

Macy’s used two statutes that allow it to detain shoplifters and collect penalties for shoplifting, respectively, “as a double edged sword, instead of a shield,” Mendez wrote.

“A suspected shoplifter is given no opportunity to otherwise object, have a hearing, or receive guidance from counsel before signing a confession to shoplifting, and/or agreeing to pay civil penalties because the civil penalties are being demanded at the time the individual is under detention by Macy’s,” the judge said.

"We are determined to delve into [these cases] and solve this problem," Moftah and Orellana's attorney said Thursday.

A spokesman for Macy’s on Wednesday said the preliminary injunction “relates to in-store civil recovery" and claimed the store discontinued the practice in the fall of 2015.

“Given that this is a matter in active litigation, we do not have further comment to make,” he added.

The retailer promised to revamp its policy of detaining alleged shoplifters in August 2014, after Attorney General Eric Schneiderman investigated its practices following complaints from minority customers who claimed they’d been racially profiled and wrongfully detained at its stores.