Home Depot Tracked a Crime Ring and Found an Unusual Suspect

For years, Robert Dell ran a drug recovery program at what was known as The Rock Community Church and Transformation Center in St. Petersburg, Fla. On the side, prosecutors say, Dell also ran an organized retail-crime ring.

The pastor had been working as a fence, the middleman buying stolen goods from thieves and reselling them for a profit, according to prosecutors. Dell was telling people who went to his recovery program to steal tools like drills and pin nailers from Home Depot stores all over Florida and drop them off at his home. Using the eBay account Anointed Liquidator, he sold $3 million of items online since 2016, Home Depot and a search warrant affidavit said.

Dell and four other people, including his wife and mother, were arrested in early August in Tampa, Fla., after a seven-month investigation in which Home Depot collaborated with Florida law enforcement. Dell is now facing charges including racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering and dealing in stolen property.

Dell, 57 years old, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He was released on bond in late September. An attorney for Dell declined to comment.

Executives at retailers such as Walmart, Target, Macy’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods in August blamed criminal networks for causing problems with their inventories, with some adding that safety incidents are increasing. Some companies like Target, Nordstrom and Nike are going further and permanently closing stores they say have been hard-hit by theft and crime.

Dell’s case highlights the challenges that retailers and law enforcement have in stamping out complex retail crime. Collaborations between the parties can take time, often years, to connect individual thefts to larger organizations or groups.

As a result, companies dealing with a surge in thefts are putting more resources into their own retail-crime investigations. They are also seeking collaborations with police and resale platforms to stop people profiting from their stolen goods. Prosecutors across the country have said they are stepping up efforts to target fences.

“The fence is crucial,” said Scott Glenn, vice president of asset protection for Home Depot. “A successful organized retail-crime organization has to have somebody pulling the strings.”

Fences can obtain their supply of goods from boosters, or people who are willing to steal for small cash payments or drugs, and often provide them with lists of merchandise they want, according to authorities. Fences often turn to online marketplaces to unload goods, but they can also look for buyers elsewhere. In some cases, they operate wholesale businesses that supply retailers or marketplaces with legitimately acquired goods as well as stolen items.

This year, U.S. attorneys in Washington, Texas and Pennsylvania announced the arrests or sentencing of individuals accused of making millions by selling stolen items through e-commerce platforms such as eBay, Amazon, Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp.

“Those who steal cannot reap their profits without someone to resell,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement. In a report about organized retail crime, Bragg said that his office is focusing on prosecuting fences to cut the profit out of these crimes.

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar said in September the way criminals steal from a retailer and use online marketplaces to sell merchandise presents unique challenges including jurisdictional issues. In Seattle, authorities are aware of several fencing operations, but staffing constraints are hampering police from pursuing investigations, the city auditor’s office said in a July report.

Retailers on the offensive

Before Florida authorities began building a case against Dell, Home Depot investigators started looking closely at two people whom they had linked to thefts at stores over a period of years.

Home Depot, similar to other large retailers, employs loss-prevention personnel to monitor security footage at stores and prevent theft of its merchandise. The home-improvement chain has 2,322 stores across North America and generated $144.8 billion in annual revenue in the year ended Jan. 29.

In early March, a loss-prevention investigator from the company identified two people leaving a store in Ruskin, Fla., carrying two cordless impact wrenches and cordless die grinders that they didn’t pay for, according to a search warrant affidavit. The investigator photographed the car they left in and provided the information to law enforcement.

Agents from the Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Department conducted surveillance operations in April and May and identified the suspects visiting Home Depot stores in seven counties. The agents then saw the car drive to Robert Dell’s home, where the pair would drop off items inside a garage.

Law-enforcement agents in May obtained details of Dell’s eBay seller account, Anointed Liquidator, which linked him to the address where the suspects were delivering the stolen goods. To confirm the location, Home Depot investigators bought a pin nailer from Dell on eBay and later returned it. Officers confirmed the package had been returned to Dell’s home a week later.

Officers in June arrested the two suspects as they were exiting a Home Depot store with products that were believed to be stolen. One said she had been stealing items for about five years and that Dell would direct them to obtain specific products and would purchase the stolen merchandise. She also told law enforcement that there were other groups of people also working for Dell that she had encountered while dropping off goods at his residence.

Dell initially paid them about $5,000 to $10,000 a day, but more recently they were getting only about $600 to $2,000 because they were unable to steal as many items, the woman told law enforcement. She said that she had been arrested before, and that Dell had posted bond payments for the pair and knew the merchandise was stolen.

The retail industry uses the term “shrink” to quantify losses from theft, as well as from lost or damaged goods. Shrink accounted for $112.1 billion in losses in 2022, up from $93.9 billion a year earlier, according to a recent survey by the National Retail Federation. The average shrink rate reported by retailers was at levels similar to 2019 and 2020, the survey showed.

Retailers are exploring myriad ways to address continuing problems with theft, ranging from permanently closing stores they say have been hard-hit by crime to locking up more items on shelves as a deterrent. On a recent call with analysts, Lowe’s executives said that the company was developing technology that embeds radio frequency identification in power tools, rendering them inoperable unless they are scanned and purchased.

There has also been a rise in violence and intimidation associated with store thefts, retail executives said. Target Chief Executive Brian Cornell said in August that the retailer recorded a 120% increase in theft incidents involving violence or threats of violence during the first five months of the year.

In April, a Home Depot loss-prevention employee was fatally shot inside a store in Pleasanton, Calif., after attempting to stop a female suspect from stealing. In September, a CVS store manager in Mesa, Ariz., was shot and killed by a customer after a confrontation, when the customer returned with a gun.

Tracking down the goods

Authorities and loss-prevention experts say the easiest way to unload stolen merchandise is selling it through online marketplaces. Congress passed legislation in June seeking to deter people from acquiring and selling stolen or counterfeit items online. Resale platforms, which supported the legislation as a way to deal with the surge in retail theft, are now required to track and get personal information for all sellers with 200 or more transactions and making at least $5,000 in gross revenue during a 12-month period.

EBay’s criminal and regulatory investigations supervisor, Christian Hardman, said his team works with retailers and law enforcement to review more than 500 accounts every year that appear to be fencing operations.

Under the Anointed Liquidator account, Dell conducted some 10,500 sales from January 2020 until May of this year, netting about $1.5 million, according to the affidavit. EBay, in the quarter ended June 30, reported having some 1.9 billion listings on its website.

Hardman said the accounts typically maintain a high positive feedback rating because they sell their inventory for below retail value. “Buyers are happy, overall. They’re getting a good deal and the sellers are willing to make the transaction as pleasant as possible,” he said.

To find the fences, retailers will tell eBay about specific items targeted by thieves, and the company can identify sellers with large inventories of those products. In some instances, eBay will ask the seller to verify their inventory and who they are.

EBay initially flagged Dell’s account internally for suspicious activity in 2017, Hardman said. And while sales continued for years, he said the issue never fell off the company’s radar. It wasn’t until 2021 that Home Depot investigators started gathering evidence that the goods that Dell was selling online might have come from boosters.

Once there was enough evidence that linked the boosters to Dell, the information was presented to law enforcement and eBay shut down the account earlier this year, Hardman said.

After the suspects in Tampa were arrested, the number of thefts at Home Depot stores in the area have dropped, said Glenn of Home Depot. He said that thieves might be hitting other retailers if they think that the home-improvement giant is working with law enforcement.

“Somebody else will rise up,” Glenn said, “and probably start doing this in the absence of this group that was busted.”

Write to Inti Pacheco at inti.pacheco@wsj.com