When the thief picked the lox, the cops shouted, "Spread 'em!"
A bagel-brained bandit stuffed a dozen packs of smoked salmon in his pants at a Brooklyn deli -- but got schmeared by a couple of workers before he could get out the door, police said yesterday.
And now he's the catch of the day at Rikers.
"It was enough lox to feed a football team," Leo Stein, manager of Landau's Market in Borough Park, said of the 6-ounce packages of Nova, which sell for $9.99 apiece.
"I have no idea how he fit it all in his jeans."
It was another manager, Lipa Lichtenstein, who spotted the thief, identified as Sergey Muzlayov, 31, in a corner of the market Tuesday around 5 p.m., allegedly shoving the premium lox in his pants, and confronted the thief.
"Hey, where's the lox?" Lichtenstein shouted.
Muzlayov allegedly pulled a syringe out of his pocket and threatened the manager, but Lichtenstein fought him to get the merchandise back.
"They started wrestling for the lox, and then other people ran to hold him down," Stein said.
Managers called the Shomrim neighborhood patrol, who detained him until police arrived.
By the time cops showed up, Muzlayov's face was badly beaten, with blood streaming down his cheek.
The suspect, whose rap sheet reads like the everything bagel of petit larceny, has 24 prior arrests for thefts of such items as beard trimmers and bicycles, cops said.
He was arraigned on charges of robbery, menacing, harassment and possession of a weapon, and held on $10,000 bail, police said.
Although shaken by the robbery, managers hadn't decided the fate of the fish.
"We're going to decide what to do with the lox," Stein said. "We could put them back on the shelf if we wanted to."
Shoplifting is not unheard of at the kosher market, but this was a first, Stein said.
"No one has stolen lox from here," he said. "But nothing surprises me. The lox were an easy target."
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