Over $1.5M worth of stolen property has been recovered from a residence and a number of storage facilities across the city and police say it is one of the largest seizures in Calgary.

Police executed search warrants on Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at the following addresses:

  • A residence, detached garage and vehicle in the 0 to 100 block of Prestwick Manor S.E.
  • A storage facility in the 4000 block of 116 Ave. S.E.
  • A storage facility in the 11000 block of 40 St. S.E.
  • A storage facility in the 4000 block of Barlow Tr. S.E.

The property includes sporting goods, apparel, beauty products, optical supplies, home and industrial appliances, artwork, a used vehicle, new and used tires, snow blowers and a log splitter.

“We have approximately five and a half sea cans full of property,” said CPS Insp. Nancy Farmer, Calgary Police Service. “They are just as jam-packed as where we located the property and it was quite overwhelming when we managed to execute the warrants and see the magnitude of the property that we recovered.”

Police say a lot of the items were brand new and were from retail businesses in the city.

“It is astronomical when you start to look at the amount of merchandise that was there,” said Farmer. “This is not residential break-and-enter. This is complete commercial break-and-enter, big businesses, some small businesses.”

“The property seizure appears to be basically a text book example of organized retail crime from my experience in working in the unit the past four years. Most of the goods were new, in boxes, in packaging with retail tags on them,” said Constable Laura Sampson, CPS Organized Retail Crime Team.

They believe half of the property was stolen over an 18 month period and the rest was acquired through organized retail crime offences.

“The goods are usually taken through systematic set ups so that's where you’re looking at large volumes of people all with certain responsibilities. You’re looking at the person who walks in the store, the person who does the distraction, the person who does the vehicle, the person who takes the property, the person who then moves the property. So it’s a large amount of people that needs to be involved to do these high, high level thefts and then what happens is that property is either housed or its sold on classified ads, such as our e-auctioning sites, we all know them, kijiji, eBay, other personal sites,” said Sampson.

Cody William Scott, 28, of Calgary, is charged with several counts of possession of stolen property over $5,000 and will next appear in court on February 8.

Investigators are working to return the recovered items to the property owners and say additional charges could be laid in the case.