ILL-FATED: Erica Wang — who was busted at this Ralph Lauren store — with ex-fiancé Todd English. (David X. Prutting/PatrickMcMullan.com)
(Daniel Shapiro)
LUXE GOOD: The flagship Ralph Lauren store on Madison Avenue is loaded with pricey merchandise that Erica Wang allegedly lifted. (
)
As if it weren’t enough that she got left at the altar by celebrity chef Todd English — now, she’s been busted for shoplifting.
Jilted bride Erica Wang of Manhattan was caught last week swiping nearly $6,000 in clothing from the Ralph Lauren store where she worked — and then even copped to stealing $46,000 more, sources told The Post yesterday.
“Todd English is lucky he didn’t marry her,” a source said about Wang’s former fiancé, the mastermind behind The Plaza Hotel Food Hall and Ãa Va restaurant at the Intercontinental in Times Square.
Wang, 36, had been working for the flagship Ralph Lauren store on Madison Avenue at East 72nd Street for about eight months before the bust, sources said.
On Wednesday, she picked up nine items totaling $5,944.25 at the preppy clothing emporium and stuffed them in a black shopping bag, according to a criminal complaint that cited a witness.
When she then tried to leave through the employee exit, another worker stopped her.
Wang claimed she “did pay for said items and had a receipt that [she] was going to retrieve,” the complaint said.
But “instead of getting said receipt, [Wang hid the] items inside of a storage room.”
Wang returned to the storage room the next day — and hid the items again in another location in the same room, authorities said.
When confronted by a co-worker, Wang not only copped to the crime — she confessed to even more theft from the store, the complaint said.
“I stole $46,194 worth of merchandise, not including the $6,000 I stole today,” Wang said, according to the complaint.
The Midtown resident was charged with grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. She was released on her own recognizance after appearing Friday in Manhattan Criminal Court.
After court, she flew to California, where she stayed with her family for one night before jetting to Hong Kong, her dad said yesterday.
When asked about her alleged shoplifting from Ralph Lauren, her dad, Raymond Wang, bizarrely said, “That was months ago.”
The stunning Wang, a former Peninsula Hotel concierge, had been set to marry English at a $150,000 wedding in October 2009.
Hours before the planned ceremony at the St. Regis Hotel — after having been missing for days — English phoned Wang and said, “I know this call is long overdue, but I can’t marry you today,” she recalled in a Post interview a week later.
She went on with the reception anyway.
Additional reporting by Emmet Berg in Hillsborough, Calif., and Natasha Velez in New York