Sunny McDonough, the alleged serial package thief, has been sentenced to 15 months in jail after she was found to have violated the terms of her probation out of Wareham District Court.
It was the first significant sentence imposed on McDonough, who has faced larceny charges in courts across the state, including those related to package thefts from the mailhouse at the Redbrook community in South Plymouth.
On Wednesday, Judge David Sorrenti revoked McDonough’s probation, sentencing her to 15 months in jail, reduced by 73 days she has already served for other probation violations over the past year.
Sorrenti found McDonough violated the terms of her probation by failing to show up for mandatory drug tests and for racking up new charges while on probation.
In court papers, the judge also checked off several other reasons for imposing the jail sentence including “the safety of the public,” “the unlikelihood that the rehabilitative purpose of probation will be achieved” and “the probationer’s record of previous violations — 3.”
McDonough, who has been charged with stealing packages from residential buildings all over eastern Massachusetts, had escaped serious consequences until January when Brockton District Court judge Jeffrey Clifford granted a prosecutor’s motion to revoke McDonough’s bail and sentenced her to 90 days in the Suffolk County House of Correction.
At that time, McDonough, who has denied all charges, was found to have violated her pre-trial conditions of release by failing one drug test and not showing up for two others.
The Wareham District Court probation was in connection with her alleged theft of packages (including a mattress and a motorcycle seat) from a Middleborough apartment complex in July 2022.
While on probation, she was charged with additional crimes, including the string of Redbrook thefts last summer from.
The Plymouth case was the 15th one against McDonough, court records show. She allegedly sold stolen merchandise through her Facebook “Couture Closet,” according to social media posts.
She has had similar larceny cases in Quincy, Ayer, Lowell, Cambridge, Woburn, Wrentham, Concord, Brockton, and Wareham courts, records show. She has also been a suspect in thefts in Norwood, Easton, Westford, Natick, Foxborough, Hudson, and even Nashua, NH, where she was accused of trying to return a stolen item to a HomeGoods store for credit, according to police reports.
After she was identified as a suspect in the Redbrook thefts, Plymouth police – as well as officers from Westford and East Bridgewater who were also eyeing her for thefts, raided her home – according to police reports.
On Wednesday, Sorrenti focused on the charges she faced in Brockton District Court stemming from the search of her East Bridgewater home.
She was charged with unlawful possession of a theft detection device — which she allegedly used to remove inventory control tags from merchandise — and two counts of receiving stolen property.
Besides the theft detection device, police reported discovering “tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of various merchandise with the tags still on the items in almost every room of the home,” police reports said. The items included sneakers, appliances, cosmetics and handbags.
It’s unclear if any victims have gotten back their stolen merchandise.
Cynthia LeTourneau, a Redbrook resident whose $250 sunglasses were stolen last summer, called McDonough’s jail term “long overdue.”
“Her sentence of 15 months comes out to 456 days and she will get credit for 73 days she has already served for three prior violations,” LeTourneau said in an email. “If she were to be sentenced to one day for each item she stole, my guess is that she would have received a much longer sentence.”
McDonough still has cases pending in Plymouth and Ayer district courts.
Her lawyer, William Franzese, could not be reached for comment.
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.