It looked like routine business inside a busy Bay Shore auto shop, orders coming in, inventory moving out, nothing unusual.
Until someone noticed the customers didn’t exist.
Authorities say the scheme quietly unfolded inside the Pep Boys located at 1820 Sunrise Highway in Bay Shore, where a trusted employee allegedly turned his position into a pipeline for theft, one fake order at a time.
According to prosecutors, Milton Blaylock, 27, of Hempstead, was working as an assistant service manager when he allegedly began creating orders for customers who were never real. On paper, everything checked out. In reality, investigators say, the tires were simply disappearing.
Over the course of several months, from late summer into November 2025, those fake transactions allegedly added up fast. Authorities say roughly 38 special orders were placed, allowing Blaylock to remove about $82,000 worth of new tires from the store’s inventory without permission.
For a while, nothing raised alarms.
Then came the moment that changed everything.
Loss prevention flagged the suspicious activity, orders tied to customers no one could track down. That internal discovery triggered an investigation, ultimately leading police straight back to someone inside the store.
Blaylock was arrested on March 19, 2026, bringing the alleged inside job to an abrupt end.
The next day, he was arraigned on a grand larceny charge and released under supervision. If convicted, he could face significant prison time.
What started as routine transactions inside a Bay Shore shop has now become a cautionary tale, how a system built on trust can unravel from the inside, one fake name at a time.
Photo: Dwight Burdette, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
