Former Berlin Elected Official To Serve Time For Theft, Issuing Bad Checks

SNOW HILL — A beleaguered former Berlin Town Council member and butcher shop owner was sentenced on Tuesday to five years in jail with all but 18 months suspended in two separate cases of theft from a north-end Ocean City grocery store and issuing bad checks to one of her purveyors.

In August 2017, the Ocean City Police Department (OCPD) began an investigation into the alleged theft of large quantities of meat from the Acme grocery store in the resort by Berlin Butcher Shop owner and former town councilmember Lisa Hall, now 60, of Berlin. According to OCPD officials at the time, Hall was initially suspected of buying cases of various meat products from the Acme in Ocean City and then repackaging it and reselling it at her shop in Berlin, which, among other things, violated health code rules that govern food-selling operations.

However, it later came to light Hall was picking up meat orders from the Acme in Ocean City and not paying for them. In those cases, store cashiers, uncertain if Hall had made prior payment arrangements, allowed the butcher shop owner to leave the store with large meat orders without paying for them. Four months after that investigation, Hall was formally charged with four counts of theft less than $1,000 and one count of theft scheme from $1,000 to under $10,000.

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