Palm Beach County Couple Charged in an Alleged $1.1 Million Stolen Baby Formula Operation

A Lake Worth couple is accused of running a statewide retail theft operation that investigators say generated more than $1.1 million by purchasing and reselling baby formula stolen from retailers across Florida. Mohammed Alsaidi, 59, and Zeina Abdul-Hassan-Sou Zabib, 49, each face one count of conspiracy to commit racketeering and two counts of directing the dealing of stolen property. A judge set bond at $750,000 for each defendant.

Both defendants are charged and have not been convicted. Under Florida law they are presumed innocent, and the allegations described below come from investigative filings and law enforcement statements rather than from findings a court has made.

Investigators allege the pair sat at the center of a network in which organized crews, sometimes called boosters, stole formula from Publix, Walmart, Target, CVS and Winn-Dixie stores and sold it to the couple, who then resold it. Detectives said the alleged scheme operated between 2024 and 2026 and involved more than 150 targeted thefts.

What investigators say they found

The case was built on the kinds of records that organized retail theft investigations typically depend on. Detectives cited surveillance footage, phone and iCloud records, financial documents, invoices and ledgers as tying the defendants to the alleged operation.

A search of the couple's home on Denicola Lane recovered baby formula, additional retail merchandise, electronics and records documenting formula purchases and sales, according to investigators. Physical inventory recovered at a residence is the evidence that most directly connects a fencing allegation to the person charged.

Authorities allege that messages recovered during the investigation showed the two coordinating which products to obtain, arranging payments and setting delivery locations. Communications of that kind are the material prosecutors use to establish the direction element of a dealing in stolen property charge.

The alleged thefts spanned multiple counties, including Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, Orange, Polk and Osceola, which is the geographic scope that supports statewide prosecution rather than county-by-county charges.

The charges and what they require

Conspiracy to commit racketeering under Florida's RICO statute requires prosecutors to prove an agreement to participate in a pattern of racketeering activity through an enterprise. The pattern element generally requires at least two related incidents of qualifying criminal activity within a specified period.

RICO is the charge that converts a series of individual thefts into a single prosecution with substantially higher penalties. It is a first-degree felony in Florida, and the statute also authorizes civil forfeiture of proceeds and property used in the enterprise.

Directing the dealing in stolen property is the charge aimed at the organizer rather than the person who took the merchandise. Florida law distinguishes between trafficking in stolen property and initiating, organizing, planning, financing, directing, managing or supervising the theft of property and trafficking in it, and the latter carries the heavier classification.

The $750,000 bond set for each defendant reflects the alleged scale of the operation. Bond decisions in Florida consider the seriousness of the charges, ties to the community and flight risk, and figures at that level are typical for large-scale organized theft allegations.

Why baby formula

Infant formula has become one of the most targeted products in organized retail theft nationally, and the reasons are structural. It carries high value relative to its size, has universal demand, does not require the purchaser to be identified, and is difficult to trace once removed from its original retail context.

Retailers have responded by locking formula in cabinets or securing it behind counters, a change most Florida shoppers have observed over the past several years. Those measures reduce theft but also make legitimate purchases slower and more difficult, a cost borne disproportionately by low-income families who shop at stores where security measures are most intensive.

The resale channel is what makes the theft profitable. Stolen formula reenters commerce through online marketplaces, flea markets, small independent retailers and export channels, often at prices below retail that appear to consumers as a legitimate discount.

The public health dimension is what separates formula from other frequently stolen merchandise. Formula requires temperature-controlled storage and has expiration dating that matters, because infants consuming spoiled or expired formula face genuine medical risk. Product stolen and stored in vehicles or unregulated warehouses does not maintain those conditions.

Organized retail theft in Florida

Florida has strengthened its organized retail theft laws over recent legislative sessions, creating enhanced penalties for coordinated theft operations and for the use of multiple participants. The statutory changes reflect retailer lobbying and a recognition that individual shoplifting charges did not reach the organizers.

The Attorney General's Office of Statewide Prosecution handles cases that cross judicial circuit boundaries, which is the mechanism that allows a single prosecution for conduct spanning six counties. Without that authority, each county would prosecute the thefts occurring within its jurisdiction separately.

Law enforcement approaches these cases through partnerships with retail loss prevention departments, which maintain their own investigative capacity and case databases. Major retailers employ organized retail crime investigators who track patterns across stores and share intelligence with police.

This is not the first Florida formula theft case. A separate prosecution earlier in 2026 charged three South Florida women in connection with multi-county formula thefts totaling more than $32,000, an operation of substantially smaller scale involving several of the same retail chains and counties.

How boosting networks are structured

Organized retail theft operations follow a consistent structure that investigators and loss prevention professionals describe similarly across cases. At the bottom are the people who physically remove merchandise from stores, frequently recruited from populations facing addiction, homelessness or acute financial pressure, and paid a fraction of retail value.

Above them sit the purchasers who buy stolen goods in bulk, consolidate inventory and handle the resale. That layer is where the profit concentrates, because the margin between what a booster is paid and what the goods bring on the secondary market is substantial.

The organizational logic is deliberate. Boosters take the physical risk and, if caught, face charges tied to the value of what they were carrying, typically a low-level felony or misdemeanor. The organizers rarely enter a store and rarely appear on surveillance footage, which is why cases against them require financial records, communications and controlled purchases rather than eyewitness evidence.

Prosecutors bringing RICO charges are attempting to reach that upper layer, and the statute's structure, criminalizing participation in an enterprise rather than individual acts, exists precisely because ordinary theft charges do not reach people who never touch the merchandise.

What happens in the case now

The defendants have been charged, which is the beginning of a criminal case rather than its resolution. The next steps are arraignment, at which formal pleas are entered, followed by discovery, during which the defense receives the state's evidence.

RICO prosecutions are document-intensive and typically take considerably longer than ordinary theft cases to reach trial. Financial records, phone extractions and cloud account data require analysis by both sides, and defense challenges to how that evidence was obtained are common.

Both defendants are entitled to counsel, to challenge the state's evidence and to a trial at which the state bears the burden of proving each element beyond a reasonable doubt. Nothing in the investigative allegations constitutes proof of guilt.

Forfeiture proceedings frequently run parallel to Florida RICO prosecutions, targeting assets alleged to be proceeds of the enterprise. Those are civil matters with their own standards and timelines.

The cost retailers pass along

Retail industry estimates of losses from organized theft run into the billions nationally, though the figures are contested and industry groups have at times revised them substantially downward after scrutiny. What is less disputed is that specific product categories in specific stores experience theft at rates that change how those stores operate.

The visible consequences are familiar to Florida shoppers: locked cases, receipt checks at exits, reduced product availability on open shelves and, in some cases, store closures in locations where losses became untenable. Each of those measures imposes friction on legitimate customers.

Pricing is the less visible channel. Retailers treat shrinkage as a cost of goods sold, and that cost is reflected in prices across the store rather than isolated to the stolen category. Consumers who never steal anything pay for theft.

Employee safety has become part of the discussion as well. Major retailers have generally instructed staff not to intervene physically in theft, a policy adopted after violent incidents, which shifts enforcement entirely to law enforcement and loss prevention professionals.

What it means for Florida shoppers and retailers

For consumers, the immediate relevance is the secondary market. Formula purchased substantially below retail price from online sellers, flea market vendors or unfamiliar small retailers carries genuine risk, both of being stolen goods and of having been stored improperly.

Parents are advised to purchase formula from established retailers, to check expiration dates and container integrity, and to be skeptical of pricing that is significantly below what major retailers charge. The formula shortage of 2022 taught many families to look for alternative sources, and that habit persists.

For retailers, cases like this one are the intended target of the enforcement push. Loss prevention professionals have long argued that arresting individual boosters accomplishes little, because the organizers simply recruit replacements, and that disrupting the purchase and resale layer is what actually stops an operation.

What's next

The case proceeds through Palm Beach County courts, with arraignment and pretrial proceedings ahead. Whether additional defendants are charged is an open question in cases of this structure, since the alleged network involved a substantial number of people conducting the thefts themselves.

Watch for whether the state pursues forfeiture, for the outcome of any bond modification motions, and for the eventual trial date. RICO cases of this size in Florida frequently resolve through negotiated pleas rather than trial, but that determination is many months away.