Man cops to taking 8 TV sets

WASILLA — An Anchorage man is in jail having stolen, by his own count, eight flat-screen televisions from Valley Fred Meyer stores.

Aleksey V. Knyazev, 27, is charged with four counts of felony theft.

According to an affidavit filed in court by Wasilla Police Officer Jean Achee, store security detained Knyazev Wednesday and called police, saying the televisions he’d stolen were wroth a total of $13,829.

Police talked to Knyazev, who waived his rights to remain silent and have an attorney present. He said he’d been selling the televisions to various people in Anchorage.

Knyazev told police he’d stolen a television that day, three the day before, one two days prior and one more the day before that, Achee wrote. He said he’d stolen three more two weeks prior from the Palmer store.

Achee said Knyazev admitted to two different methods for the theft.

The first, which he used the day he was arrested, involved “acting like an employee and carting the television out through the loading bay doors.”

The second he said he used in Palmer.

“He stated he took one television at a time in a shopping cart and pushed it out the front door,” Achee wrote.

According to his affidavit, Achee found two flat screens in Knyazev’s car in the Wasilla store’s parking lot.

Knyazev was jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility on $4,000 bail. Prison records Friday afternoon showed he’d been moved to the Anchorage jail.