A Georgia woman is facing up to 75 years in prison after stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods stores through the repeated fraudulent returns of expensive rugs.
Santina Green, also known as Santina Hill, of Decatur, a city northeast of Atlanta, entered an open plea of no contest to racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering and fraud charges related to an organized retail crime operation.
Green is accused of defrauding TJX Companies Inc. stores of more than $50,000 in Florida and as much as $300,000 overall through repeated fraudulent returns, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Tuesday.
Between November 2020 and May 2021, a group of fraudsters purchased expensive rugs at TJX stores — which include TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods — using debit cards, before supposedly changing their mind and immediately returning them.
Green and others would keep the receipt, then use the same receipt or a duplicate at other TJX locations to return cheaper, non-TJX rugs that had been marked with forged price coding to appear as though they were the authentic products, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors say the scheme exploited delays in reconciliation between combo and standalone store point-of-sale systems, allowing for multiple returns on a single receipt before national flagging.
Investigators linked nine debit cards to the suspects, who were involved in 84 fraudulent transactions in the state of Florida.
Authorities identified Green as the primary suspect through government-issued IDs, multiple aliases, store surveillance video, return data and bank records.
She was linked to co-subjects Albert Junior Boyce Jr., Diana Rochelle Harris and David Lee Griffin.
Prosecutors said that Green participated in the scheme until April 2021.
Green entered her no-contest plea in the Twentieth Judicial Circuit in Lee County. The attorney general’s office said prosecutors had brought in witnesses from Massachusetts, Virginia, and several Florida counties before Green entered her plea.
“This conviction holds a fraudster accountable for leading a sophisticated racketeering scheme that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars across multiple states,” Uthmeier said.
She faces up to 75 years in the Florida Department of Corrections. Her sentencing has been set for August 3.