The owner of a string of Pittsburgh-area used electronics stores admitted this week to a federal judge that he’s a criminal who used his business, Ninja Electronics, to buy goods shoplifted by drug addicts so he could resell them and earn himself more than $500,000.
Milton Barr, 36, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering.
Barr had been indicted in 2020 on six counts related to the delivery of stolen goods through the U.S. mail.
His stores sold used electronics, as well as health and beauty aids and over-the-counter medications online.
Federal agents with the FBI, IRS and U.S. Postal Inspection Service, along with Pittsburgh police and officers from Ross and Shaler, initially raided various Ninja locations and other businesses in 2016 in connection with the case. At the time, officials acknowledged the raids but refused to say what they were about.
Among the locations searched were Ninja stores Downtown and in Ross, Dormont and Edgewood in addition to a warehouse on the South Side.
From January 2016 through August 2018, according to Barr’s plea, he oversaw an operation that bought health and beauty aids such as Crest White Strips, cosmetics, razors, hair products and other items, in addition to medications such as cold medicine and pain relievers, from people who walked into his stores. Prosecutors said the sellers were all drug addicts who had stolen the items from drug stores and retail outlets.
The addicts often came into Ninja locations several times a day, offering stolen goods — always new and still in the original boxes — for Barr to buy. He paid them pennies on the dollar and then resold the items on Amazon and other websites, shipped them across the U.S. and reaped the profits.
Prosecutors said he received more than $540,000 in Amazon payments from 2016 through 2018 as a result of the scheme.
Barr’s employees were told not to ask the addicts where they got the stuff they were selling. If a seller told an employee that something had been shoplifted, the employees were told not to buy the item.
But the U.S. attorney’s office said it was “common knowledge” among the employees that the addicts were stealing the items that Ninja was buying.
U.S. District Judge Mark Hornak said he would sentence Barr in May.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
