Owner of 4 Shop 'n Saves given probation for $300K coupon scheme

The owner of four North Hills grocery stores was sentenced Monday to four years of probation after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors for a long-running coupon scheme that bilked nearly $300,000 from manufacturers.

Michael Mihelic, 60, of Franklin Park pleaded guilty to a single count of theft.

“It was pretty fair,” Mihelic’s attorney, Devin Winklosky, said of the plea deal.

Mihelic was initially accused of getting more than $306,000 in the scheme, but the number decreased to $275,895 as the investigation continued. He paid the restitution in full, according to the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office.

It isn’t unusual for the dollar amounts to change as theft cases proceed, DA’s office spokesman Mike Manko said.

Mihelic owns the Rochester Road, Pines Plaza, Glenshaw and Richland Mall Shop ’n Save stores.

He was continuing a practice initiated by his late father, where employees were told to collect the coupons from unsold newspapers and turn them in as if they were used by customers. The scheme had been in practice for years under Don Mihelic’s ownership and continued when his son took over the business, a former employee told investigators, according to a criminal complaint.

Another former employee told police about the scheme in 2017, and other employees detailed to detectives from the DA’s office how they knew what they were doing was wrong but were told to do so by Mihelic or his father, who died in 2014.