Recent break-ins have vape shop owners across southwestern Ontario on edge

CTV’s Krista Simpson hears from a vape store owner who says he was impacted by a series of break-ins across southern Ontario.

Vape store owners are speaking out about the toll recent break-ins have had on their businesses.

Tuesday afternoon, Waterloo Regional Police announced they had made arrests in a series of similar incidents at vape stores across southwestern Ontario.

Three Brampton men, all in their thirties, are facing a slew of charges related to more than 15 incidents, and police say more charges are expected.

One incident was at Bob’s Vape Store in Kitchener’s Doon neighbourhood early on Jan. 5, the same day police made the first two arrests.

Security footage from the store shows two people parking a truck outside the shop, shattering the glass on the door, then using a chain attached to the vehicle to pull off metal bars in the doorframe.

The thieves crawl into the store and start emptying the shelves into recycling bins.

They were in and out in about five minutes, estimates store owner Bob Gill, taking $50,000 to $60,000 of products.

“As much as they could grab at once, they tried to take,” Gill says.

Police arrived on the scene minutes after the thieves fled.

Regional Police have released video of some of the thefts in the vape store investigation, showing similar scenes to what happened at Bob’s Vape Shop.

Gill says in the three years his store has been open, he’s dealt with a few thefts by young people, but nothing as expensive as the recent break-in.

He’s still working with his insurance company and trying to get the store restocked.

“We’ve been closed for a whole week,” he says. “This week, I took out a line of credit to try to get some merchandise back in. I don’t have much money at the moment.”

Gill says he spent thousands of dollars in security features for the store, including metal bars on the door and an electric door sensor. After the recent break-in, he’s seeing if there’s anything else he can add, such as a shutter that goes over the whole front of the store when it is closed.

“I’m hoping maybe that will deter them, or at least make them a little bit longer so the police can show up at that time,” he says. “But other than that I can’t really do anything.”

Jazz Samra owns Toro Vape Shop, which has three locations. One on Kipling Ave. in Etobicoke was broke into on December 28.

He hasn’t heard from police if his store is among those linked to the recent arrests, but security cameras captured thieves operating in a similar style.

“They broke into the front door, they had garbage bags and everything that they were ready with,” Samra says.

Samra says in less than a minute, the thieves took about $25,000 worth of merchandise.

He’s now inserting small GPS trackers into some high value products.

“It creates a huge deterrent for thieves if it’s publicly out there that there’s trackers in these things. I’m actually going to put some signs in my store saying that for security reasons certain products have GPS trackers in them as well,” he explains.

Samra hopes this measure will also deter the people who are creating a market for the thieves by purchasing the stolen vape products.

“From the emotional side, it kind of hurts that you work so hard to build a business and people out there that would want to do something like this and rob you of it,” he tells CTV.

Gill too says the recent theft at his store has taken an emotional toll.

“Anytime my phone rings in the middle of the night or I hear any noise at nighttime, I’m thinking we’re getting robbed. So I’m always on edge.”