By Jim Clark

Police were dispatched to the Stop & Shop on McGrath Hwy. last Friday on reports of a suspicious person stopped by store Loss Prevention personnel.

Upon arrival, the officers were told that a man, later identified as Fedley Frederick, of Medford, reportedly came into the store sometime between Thursday and Friday morning, grabbed two bottles of expensive cooking oils, placed them in a shopping bag, hid them underneath a table in the Floral Department, then left the store. Frederic then reportedly returned to Stop & Shop on Friday afternoon and began to look for the bottles under the floral table.

The Loss Prevention personnel said that they had observed all of this via the store’s security surveillance video system, according to reports.

Frederick then reportedly took some flowers from the Floral Department and proceeded to the Customer Service desk and tried to return them. When asked for a receipt, Frederick reportedly claimed it was scanned onto his laptop.

Loss Prevention personnel then confronted Frederick and asked him for identification due to the fact he was trying to make a return for a refund. When asked for a receipt, Frederick again reportedly claimed the receipt was on his laptop and that his ID was in his vehicle.

The security staff then followed Frederick to his vehicle to obtain his ID. When Frederick produced a Massachusetts ID the store employee called police because he realized that Frederick had driven to the store but did not have a valid driver’s license on him. Frederick was also in a U-Haul van which he did not have the proper documentation for, according to reports.

When police asked Frederick for the rental agreement, he claimed he did not have one because his step-mother had originally rented the van and transferred it to him over the phone so there were no documents.

The store security employee also said that on January 29 Frederick returned two bottles of the same oil and received a refund of $46.48. After Frederick left, it was discovered that the receipt was fraudulent.

On the front of the receipt, the store number is listed as #498, which is the McGrath Hwy. location. However, on the back of the receipt, the security identifier shows that the receipt paper itself belong to store #412, the Brigham Circle store. Each store has its own receipt paper assigned to it. Presumably, according to police, Frederick must have scanned the original purchase receipt from store #498 and printed it on receipt paper from store #412. This is how security was able to identify the receipt being fraudulent.

Frederick was placed under arrest and charged with possession or use of counterfeit receipts.

Upon, searching the van for rental documentation, police reportedly found observed three rolls of receipt paper, each belonging to a different Stop & Shop.