A Langley business owner who lost thousands of dollars worth of product to thieves is feeling better after police made an arrest linked to her case.
Opal Bilodeau owns Ebony Beauty on Langley City’s Logan Avenue.
On April 5, someone smashed the shop window, reached in, and stole about $2,600 worth of hair extensions.
Although Bilodeau has a security camera in the store, it didn’t catch the thieves’ faces, as they were wearing hoodies and ballcaps to conceal their identities.
But after reporting the break in to the police, Bilodeau did some investigating of her own. Just a couple days after the theft, she found her hair extensions posted for sale on Craigslist.
She searched for real human hair extensions, and the products up for sale still had her custom-made “Ebony Beauty Boutique” tags on them, Bilodeau said.
Further checks allowed her to find out even more.
The hair extensions were also advertised on LetGo.com, another site for selling items. But unlike some online sites LetGo isn’t fully anonymous.
“On LetGo you have to have a full profile,” Bilodeau said.
She traced that back to a Facebook profile, and sent all the information she had gathered to the Langley RCMP.
Langley investigators looking into the case couldn’t recover the stolen items, said Cpl. Holly Largy, spokesperson for the local RCMP detachment.
By the time officers managed to track down the suspect, the hair extensions had been sold.
Without proof of a link to the burglary, or the stolen items in hand, the RCMP haven’t laid charges directly related to the Ebony Beauty theft, despite the belief of investigators that they’ve found the person responsible.
However, the person was already wanted on outstanding warrants, and has been arrested and faces a court date, said Largy.
Bilodeau said she is feeling better after hearing news of the arrest.
“The fact that she is caught is satisfying, and charged for other stuff unrelated to my store,” Bilodeau said in an email to the Langley Advance Times.
