Class Action Charges 99 Cents Only With Extortion

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Last week, a class action lawsuit was filed in county court in California against dollar retail chain 99 Cents Only Stores LLC accusing the discount store of sending extortion letters to customers accused of shoplifting.

Lead plaintiff Dennis Stankie alleges in his class action lawsuit that he was improperly accused of and detained for shoplifting while he was shopping at a 99 Cents Only store in Los Angeles. He alleges that after he paid for his purchases and attempted to leave, he was surrounded by three employees who wrongly accused him of trying to steal a bottle of Tylenol. He claims the employees tried to force him to pay $300 after detaining him and tried to make him sign a confession. He also says that he had to call the police several times.

According to the class action lawsuit, after Stankie was allowed to leave, 99 Cents Only sent him a “series of escalating demand letters” claiming he needed to pay $250 and $525 as well as attorney fees or face legal action. “The sequential demands are substantively identical and follow a classic ‘dunning’ scheme employed by debt collectors,” Stankie alleges in the 99 Cents Only class action lawsuit.

Stankie alleges that 99 Cents Only sends fake demand letters to customers who have been accused of shoplifting. The class action lawsuit contends that the letters demand that customers pay arbitrary damages and fees that are not authorized under California law. The 99 Cents Only class action lawsuit further alleges that the letters threaten customers with legal action that is also not authorized under California law.

“The demand letters are crafted to frighten customers into believing that failure to pay the amount demanded may result in criminal prosecution, subject them to a civil suit and put them at risk of liability for significant additional damages that the merchant has no legal right to recover,” says the class action lawsuit. “Consumers, fearful and ignorant of the falsity of these threats, pay millions of dollars each year in satisfaction of these misleading and unlawful demands,” it continues.

Stankie argues that even though the letters reference California’s civil shoplifting law, they improperly demand damages and fees that 99 Cents Only isn’t entitled to under the law. Additionally, according to the class action lawsuit, the discount chain accuses customers of shoplifting frequently, even though the situation is often due to obvious cashier errors, self-checkout scanner errors or overzealous loss prevention employees.

The class action lawsuit alleges that when 99 Cents Only accuses customers of shoplifting, they threaten to arrest them and make them provide their personal information and sign a document confessing to shoplifting. “Individuals detained for shoplifting are thus faced with an intractable dilemma: Sign a ‘confession’ that will be used as the basis for a civil damages demand, or else be arrested and face criminal charges — however baseless the charges are,” Stankie argues in the 99 Cents Only class action lawsuit.

Stankie is represented by Aghavni Kasparian and Darrell M. Padgette of KP Law, and Michael Chen of The Law Offices of Chen & Tran.

The 99 Cents Only Extortion Class Action Lawsuit is Stankie v. 99 Cents Only Stores LLC, Case No. BC 582920, in the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles.