A Queens man with a rap sheet stretching back to 2009 and nearly 150 prior arrests was released without bail again this week after allegedly walking out of a Target with more than $600 in candles and threatening a store clerk who tried to stop him. Shaquan Seth, 40, was arraigned on the new charges and set free almost immediately, prosecutors say, because New York law does not allow cash bail for the nonviolent theft charges he faces.
According to the New York Post, Seth allegedly stole the Threshold-brand candles from the Target at 25-01 Jackson Avenue on August 5 and left without paying. Sources told the paper that Seth threatened to shoot the young female clerk who tried to stop him from leaving. He was not found to have displayed a weapon during the incident, per the same report.
A representative for the Queens District Attorney's office said the charges were not eligible for bail under state law, and Seth was released without bail after being arraigned. That outcome traces directly to New York's 2019 bail reform statute, which took effect in January 2020 and eliminated cash bail and pretrial detention for most nonviolent misdemeanors and Class E felonies, according to the Data Collaborative for Justice. Judges are required to release defendants on recognizance unless a specific qualifying offense applies.
A Rap Sheet Spanning 17 Years
The Post's reporting, credited to Larry Celona and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, lays out a criminal history that dates to 2009 and includes arrests for larceny, robbery, resisting arrest and assault on a police officer. Seth has been arrested nearly 150 times and has been behind bars 67 times following those arrests, the outlet reports. He faced five alleged robbery and burglary incidents between June 17 and August 5 of this year alone.
Seth had been out for less than two months when the Target theft allegedly occurred. He was released from Rikers Island on June 11 after serving five months for a November robbery and burglary case, per the Post's account. That stint followed a felony grand larceny plea in May, for which he received a six-month sentence. Seth was also taken to Elmhurst Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation this month, the outlet reports.
His history includes two separate shootings — he was shot in the hand in the Bronx in 2016 after a dispute with armed individuals, and was shot in the chest during a dispute on the Lower East Side back in 2008. One anonymous source close to the case summed up the frustration over his latest release bluntly: “It makes no sense.”
Why the Charges Don't Trigger Bail
Under New York Penal Law § 155.30, grand larceny in the fourth degree becomes a Class E felony only when stolen property exceeds $1,000 in value; thefts below that threshold are treated as misdemeanor petit larceny under § 155.25, according to the New York State Senate. Because the alleged Target haul was pegged at just over $600, it falls into a category that state law generally exempts from cash bail.
Lawmakers have since carved out exceptions. Amendments made in 2020 and 2022 added Criminal Procedure Law § 510.10(4)(t), giving judges discretion to set bail for repeat nonviolent property offenders in specific circumstances involving harm to property while already facing a pending felony or Class A misdemeanor charge, the Data Collaborative for Justice notes. Separately, New York's 2024 fiscal-year budget allows prosecutors to aggregate the value of stolen merchandise across multiple stores when thefts are part of a common scheme, a tool the Office of Governor Kathy Hochul says was designed to target serial shoplifters and reach felony grand larceny thresholds.
That same 2024 legislative package elevated assault on a retail worker causing physical injury from a misdemeanor to a Class E felony carrying potential prison time, according to the Governor's office. But a threat alone does not automatically trigger a violent felony charge. Under New York Penal Law Article 160, shoplifting only becomes robbery — a bail-eligible violent felony — if a perpetrator uses or threatens the immediate use of physical force to compel a victim to hand over property or overcome resistance, per Saland Law. Whether Seth's alleged threat meets that statutory bar appears to be part of what kept his case out of bail-eligible territory.
Part of a Larger Retail Theft Debate
Seth's case lands amid a broader citywide conversation about repeat shoplifting and bail policy. NYPD CompStat figures through early August show 27,778 retail theft complaints citywide so far this year, a 14.7 percent drop from 32,546 during the same period in 2025, according to the New York City Police Department. Yet the decline is not uniform: the NYPD's 10th Precinct, covering parts of Manhattan, saw retail theft complaints jump 25.8 percent year-to-date compared to 2025, showing how localized spikes can defy the citywide trend.
State enforcement has also ramped up. The Governor's office reported in November that the New York State Police Organized Retail Theft Task Force had recovered more than $2.6 million in stolen merchandise and made over 1,200 arrests across 1,006 operations since launching in April 2024. That comes after research from John Jay College of Criminal Justice found petit larceny incidents at major retailers in New York City surged 53 percent between 2019 and 2022, climbing from under 35,000 to nearly 55,000 annual complaints, per data compiled at JeffreyButts.net.
Hoodline has previously reported on related retail theft enforcement in the region, including a Queens mother-daughter theft ring case and a Long Island crackdown that led to charges against 18 people tied to a big-box theft crew. Those cases, along with Seth's, illustrate the recurring friction between New York's statutory bail guidelines for nonviolent property crimes and public frustration when the same defendants cycle repeatedly through arrest and release.
