In what may be the fishiest case of shoplifting ever, a Long Island man stole a shark from a pet store’s tank by putting it under his coat and sneaking away, cops said yesterday.
Elbert Starks, 30, of Freeport then took the foot-long baby nurse shark home in his car, without putting it in water, and placed it in his expensive, 250-gallon aquarium, cops said.
His attempts to build an illicit underwater menagerie didn’t end there – he later used a stolen credit card at another pet store to buy a moray eel, which he put in the tank with the shark, officials said.
“This guy obviously has a thing for fish,” said Brendan Jones, a worker at Parrots of the World, the Rockville Centre store where the eel was taken. “But he obviously made a poor decision.”
The bizarre shark heist occurred on Dec. 12 at Total Aquarium in Lynbrook.
Starks went up to the tank where the shark – worth $350 – was swimming and “just grabbed it and put it into his jacket,” said store employee Jared Goldenberg, 28.
“And then he just walked right out. It didn’t take long.”
He put it in his car and took a 10-minute ride home, cops said. The fish made it safely.
Starks allegedly struck again on Jan. 2, when he used the credit card, which he stole at a Franklin Square pet shop, at Parrots of the World to buy the 4-year-old, 2-foot-long green moray eel for $300.
Cops tracked down Starks, who was a frequent patron of the shops, and arrested him at his job as a food-service worker in Brooklyn.
“I put the shark in my coat and left the store,” he told detectives, according to sources. “It’s in my apartment with three other sharks.”
Cops went to his house and found both the shark and the eel well cared for. They were taken to Parrots of the World, where they were being kept in a tank marked “evidence.”
Starks – who sources said was on probation for a 2004 sex crime – was charged yesterday with one count of petit larceny and one count of grand larceny, which could get him a total of five years in jail. He was being held on $5,000 cash bail.
His lawyer, Michael Franzese, said his client never meant to hurt the creatures.
“He loves sea life basically, that’s what it comes down to.”