Mooroopna man David Tong pleads guilty to alcohol, laptop theft

A Mooroopna man who was seen by police hiding alcohol down his pants in Aldi and drinking a bottle of wine he hadn’t paid for in store has pleaded guilty to 17 charges.

David Tong pleaded guilty to stealing alcohol from The Bottle-O Mooroopna on three occasions in 2024.

A Mooroopna man narrowly avoided jail after facing almost 20 theft-related charges over a nine month period.

David Tong, 32, faced Shepparton Magistrates’ Court on March 17 and pleaded guilty to all charges.

Magistrate Simon Zebrowski said while the thefts were “low level”, Tong was “still making a pest of himself”.

Tong was arrested and charged with attempted theft on April 6 in Mooroopna last year.

Two police officers were at BWS in Mooroopna and observed Tong placing liquor bottles down his pants.

The officers approached Tong, asked him to remove the 1L bottle of whiskey and 750mL bottle of wine and noted he had no means to pay for them.

On May 15 Tong was in Mooroopna Aldi when he tucked a bottle of wine down his pants and then started to drink a second bottle of wine in the store without attempting to pay.

He was restrained by store security until police arrived.

At the same store on August 26, police officers saw Tong exit the store and noticed a bulge in his pants where he was hiding two bottles of gin.

David Tong pleaded guilty at the Shepparton Magistrates' Court to theft-related charges.

On three occasions in June and September, Tong was seen on CCTV stealing various cans and bottles of alcohol from The Bottle-O Mooroopna.

In January Tong stole an iPhone from Footscray train station and was discovered as the thief when a photo he took on the phone was immediately uploaded to the victim’s iCloud account.

In January, 2024 Tong also stole a bike in Laverton and in April stole alcohol in Footscray.

At JB HiFi in Maribyrnong Tong stole a MacBook Air valued at more than $2000 on April 14.

He then entered Highpoint Shopping Centre and committed multiple thefts including from Myer and Platypus.

Tong was confronted by centre security before producing a pair of scissors, so he was taken to the ground and kept in the guards’ custody until police arrived.

Mr Zebrowski said he had told his clerk to ask for guards to take Mr Tong into custody but changed his mind.

The court heard Tong had an intellectual disability, struggled with alcohol addiction and his offences were “fairly opportunistic”.

Mr Zebrowski said if Tong kept committing offences with his history of 32 pages of priors, he could go back to jail.

“You’ve got to help yourself … you can’t just avoid jail because you have an intellectual disability,” he said.

“I don’t know what to do with you … on a disability support pension you can’t keep paying fines.”

Tong received a two-year good behaviour bond with conviction.