How Home Depot uncovered the biggest alleged retail theft in its history
The bust last month of members of an alleged organized retail theft ring in California that Home Depot said was the largest in its history was the result of a corporate investigation years in the making.
In an exclusive interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a Home Depot official detailed how the company tracked the alleged members, helped build a case internally based on surveillance footage and other evidence, and helped law enforcement agencies make arrests.
In Southern California, prosecutors say alleged participants swiped electrical merchandise — such as dimmer switches, circuit breakers and outlets — from multiple Home Depot stores. That merchandise was allegedly resold through the group leader’s business. Felony charges were filed against nine individuals in late August.
The value of the stolen goods soared to more than $7 million, said Scott Glenn, Home Depot’s vice president of asset protection. There were 600 thefts this year alone by the group, prosecutors said.
The alleged leader of the operation, David Ahl, is now facing 45 felony counts, including conspiracy, organized retail theft, grand theft and money laundering. Ahl has pleaded not guilty to charges of organized retail theft and grand theft, according to The Associated Press.
An attorney representing Ahl could not be immediately reached for comment.
“He’s been around for years,” Glenn said in an interview. “We were, at one point, building a case against him. He went basically incognito for a long time, and then he just started showing back up on our radar again.”
The case highlights the role that some retailers play in investigating these crimes, oftentimes collecting much of the evidence. Vinings-based Home Depot has about 80 people working in its organized retail crime division, including former federal agents, the company said. It operates a high-tech investigations center in Atlanta, which CNN featured last year.
“Our goal is to present the case on a silver platter” to law enforcement officials, Glenn said.
California officials recognized the retailer for its role in the investigation at a recent news conference.
Erik Nasarenko, Ventura County district attorney, said Home Depot was “instrumental” and a “strong partner” in the case.
Nathan Hochman, Los Angeles County district attorney, said Home Depot dedicated an “enormous amount of time and effort” by getting video surveillance together and identifying each alleged theft.
Organized retail crime is a large-scale theft that typically involves a criminal enterprise. Whereas shoplifting is usually one person stealing out of need, organized retail crime is “for greed,” Glenn said.
“It’s almost never for personal consumption,” he said. “It’s always for resale.”
Organized retail crime tends to be multilayered. A ringleader orchestrates from the top, with “boosters” stealing items from stores and “fences” collecting the product and reselling it, Glenn said.
In the California case, Glenn said, Home Depot was able to get information from boosters when they got picked up for alleged shoplifting.
“They gave up where the product is going,” he said. “We were able to start working with law enforcement doing surveillances.”
He didn’t elaborate on the exact tactics the retailer used in the case, saying he didn’t want to provide a “road map” for criminals. The company has a crime-linking database and employs machine learning and artificial intelligence in its investigations, he said broadly.
Cases can become a complicated web, Glenn said, requiring coordination across multiple law enforcement jurisdictions.
“Our goal is to, again, hand that case over to them so complete that most of the work is done,” Glenn said.
At Home Depot, power tools are the most common items that are stolen, Glenn said, because they retain most of their resale value on the black or gray market. Other coveted products include copper fittings, electrical wire, outdoor power equipment and smart home items such as light switches.
Home Depot is now closing about 600 organized retail crimes a year, Glenn said.
There have been recent cases in Georgia.
In October 2024, a man was indicted for defrauding Home Depot of more than $800,000. He and a crew allegedly used fictitious driver’s licenses and fraudulent debit cards to rent equipment and tools from Home Depot and then did not return the items, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia. The man, Yasin Saleem, has entered a not guilty plea.
Home Depot said an organized group was stealing roofing shingles in a series of thefts across the Southeast, including in Georgia, with losses exceeding $50,000. Some incidents involved stealing multiple pallets of shingles in a single day, the company said.
“Investigators used surveillance footage, license plate readers, and social media to link the suspects to numerous thefts,” a Home Depot spokesperson said in an email. Law enforcement agencies collaborated to issue arrest warrants, and several people were apprehended this year, the company said.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says organized retail crime results in more than $125 billion in economic losses nationwide. The value of stolen goods in Georgia in 2021 was more than $1.6 billion, with about $325 million in lost tax revenue, the chamber says.
But the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute, says data on organized retail crime is “unreliable.” In 2023, one retailer, pharmacy chain Walgreens, said the company might have overstated how much theft took place in its stores, according to The New York Times.
Still, Georgia officials say they’ve seen an “alarming increase” in retail theft and cybercrime. Last year, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr launched the state’s first Organized Retail Crime Unit to tackle the issues and address links to other crimes. A Carr spokesperson wasn’t immediately available to provide an update on the efforts of the unit.
Home Depot’s Glenn said organized retail crime can be tied to other serious crimes.
“What we’ve uncovered is so many cases where it’s tied back to a larger money laundering scheme that the government does care about,” Glenn said. The retail crime might also be linked to human or drug trafficking, he said. “And this is just the monetization effort for that. It’s just an easy way for them to make money to fund those types of activities.”
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