Thieves sell stolen goods from Home Depot, Walmart
Multiple thieves have been spotted in the past few weeks who stole products from Home Depot stores as a result of the retailer's security measures.
On Wednesday, a former New York pawn shop owner admitted to selling stolen goods from major U.S. retailers such as Home Depot.
According to court documents, Devin Tribunella owned and operated Royal Crown Pawn Jewelry on Dewey Avenue in Rochester.
As a part of his scheme, Tribunella and his employee, Wade Shadders, would purchase stolen goods and merchandise from people known as boosters who shoplifted from Rochester area retail stores.
Tribunella advised the boosters what kind of merchandise to steal from retail stores, such as Lowes, Home Depot, Target and Walmart, and then paid the boosters a fraction of the real retail value for the goods, court documents state.
From January 2017 to November 2019, Tribunella sold and shipped $3.2 million worth of stolen goods to out-of-state buyers, according to court documents.
On Jan. 16, another thief was arrested for stealing tens of thousands of dollars in tools from a Home Depot store in Wisconsin.
The Milwaukee Police Department said on Facebook that the suspect had been wanted for 14 counts of felony retail theft.
The Home Depot on Holt Avenue in Milwaukee previously estimated that the thief had stolen $70,000 in merchandise. After executing a search warrant in a storage locker connected to the suspect, officials recovered more than $18,000 in tools stolen from the store.
The store is ramping up its security investments to combat retail theft, a problem that is currently faced industrywide.
According to the companies, the companies are losing an average of $719,548 per $1 billion in sales due to organized retail crime.
Scott Glenn, the Home Depot Vice President of Asset Protection, told FOX Business earlier this month that the company has been innovating new tools and technologies to make it harder for consumers to steal products.
He said that we have invested in our own behind-the-scenes technology, innovative things like activation of product.
The product-activation technology uses Bluetooth to create an on- and-off switch in certain products that must be activated through a transaction at the register.