Manhattan prosecutors announced charges Tuesday against four people who they said targeted intoxicated clubgoers, stole their credit cards and phones and used them to purchase more than $400,000 worth of luxury goods.
They called themselves the Grinch Boys, prosecutors said — and referred to their activities as “grinching.”
Two people whom prosecutors identified as members of the group, Julian Pomales, 33, known as Juju, and Blerina Prelvukaj, 30, known as Winter, have been charged with various counts of grand larceny, conspiracy and identity theft, among other crimes. Both pleaded not guilty.
In court, prosecutors accused them and two others who have not been arrested — Promise Shippy, 20, and Malcolm Scott, 32 — of working together to identify and isolate victims in bars and clubs from October 2022 to August 2023. The defendants encouraged those they targeted to become more intoxicated and in some cases persuaded them to leave the nightlife establishments, prosecutors said.
After stealing the victims’ credit cards and phones, prosecutors said, the ring made early-morning trips to Apple stores and expensive retailers like Amiri, Loewe and Christian Dior, many of them in the SoHo shopping district.
Joseph Pepe, a prosecutor, told the courtroom that the group called itself the Grinch Boys or “grinchsters,” and noted that Mr. Pomales had purchased a large pendant necklace bearing the likeness of the Dr. Seuss character wearing his familiar Santa hat and had posted a photo of it on social media.
The defendants sometimes charged tens of thousands of dollars in iPhones and MacBooks, Mr. Pepe said. In one visit to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan — which is open 24 hours a day — they spent $150,000 over the course of three hours.
After buying the goods, they sold them for cash, arranging at least one purchase with an individual identified by prosecutors only as Bumpman.
The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said on Tuesday that his office was working with retailers to make sure they appropriately deterred “large-scale, late-night unauthorized purchases.”
“With phone thefts yielding increasingly large payouts, we are also urging New Yorkers to take precautions,” Mr. Bragg warned. “Never hand your phone to a stranger.”
Mr. Pepe said in court that Mr. Pomales was the group’s leader and said that it was his task to identify targets whom he suspected of having credit cards with generous lines of credit.
Mr. Pomales and Mr. Scott frequently posted pictures of themselves on social media with new Apple products, full shopping bags at Apple locations and cash, Mr. Pepe said. At one point, Mr. Pomales filmed a music video in which he wore some of the luxury items prosecutors said he’d bought with stolen credit cards, as well as the Grinch necklace, which they referred to as “his signature Juju pendant.”
After Tuesday’s proceeding concluded, Mr. Pomales, wearing a stained sweatshirt, and Ms. Prelvukaj, in a heavy winter jacket with a fur-lined hood, whispered to each other. Mr. Pomales is being held in jail on an unrelated gun charge; Ms. Prelvukaj was released because the charges against her are not bail-eligible.
Their lawyers, Ralph Cherchian and James M. Phillips, declined to comment.
The scheme described by prosecutors echoed others in which people going out in Manhattan have been targeted by those seeking to take advantage of their intoxication. But other episodes that have frightened city residents in recent years have involved allegations of murder and other violent crimes.
In 2022, a series of druggings at Manhattan gay bars killed at least two people and spread fear throughout the city’s nightlife community. Five men were charged by the district attorney’s office in that scheme.
And a man named Kenwood Allen was charged in June with having killed five people, targeting revelers who spilled out of bars on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Mr. Allen was charged with 10 counts of second-degree murder and 17 counts of robbery and attempted robbery. He pleaded not guilty and his case is in progress.