{"id":310077,"date":"2026-07-30T19:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/310077\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T19:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:48:11","slug":"news-12-long-island-174","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/310077\/","title":{"rendered":"News 12 | Long Island"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Two women accused of running a shoplifting ring across New York have been arrested following a months-long investigation by numerous agencies.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Investigators say Maria Betances, 47, of Valley Stream, had people steal specific merchandise like makeup, clothing and high-demand retail products from stores in Queens, Staten Island, Nassau, Westchester and Rockland counties. <\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">She allegedly worked with Leslie Cruz, 24, or East Elmhurst.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">State police say most of the stolen items were kept at a home in Valley Stream that is used as a registered daycare.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">The items were then sold on social media or sent to the Dominican Republic to be resold, according to state police.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Investigators recovered more than 5,000 allegedly stolen items worth an estimated $159,000 from locations in Valley Stream and East Elmhurst, along with broken security devices, tools used to remove anti-theft tags, and about $30,000 in cash.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">The alleged thefts happened from February through last month.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">They are both charged with grand larceny, conspiracy, attempted criminal possession of stolen property and criminal possession of stolen property.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Betances was also charged with endangering the welfare of a child.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two women accused of running a shoplifting ring across New York have been arrested following a months-long investigation&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10],"class_list":["post-310077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}