Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the conviction of a Georgia woman on racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, and fraud charges for her involvement in defrauding several popular off-price retailers, including for over $50,000 in Florida, through a press statement this week.
According to the attorney general, Santina Green, also known as Santina Hill, pled no contest as part of an organized group defrauding TJX Companies Inc. stores, including TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods for $300,000 overall across several states for "repeated fraudulent refunds" from November 2020 to May 2021.
“This conviction holds a fraudster accountable for leading a sophisticated racketeering scheme that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars across multiple states,” Uthmeier said. “Thanks to FDLE and our statewide prosecutors, this organized fraud ring has been stopped. We will continue our fight against retail fraud to protect Florida businesses and keep prices down for families.”
Specifically, to Florida, law enforcement keyed on receipted returns of rugs purchased at the stores between $400 and 1,000 in which the group, using debit cards, would pocket the receipt after an instant “change-of-mind” return between November 2020 through May 2021. The group, organized by Green and others, would then use the receipt or duplicate at other TJX locations to return lesser non-TJX rugs purchased at other stores marked with forged “silent price coding” to mirror genuine products.
In turn, the scheme manipulated delays in combo and point-of-sale systems, allowing for multiple refunds on a single receipt before being marked for suspicious activity, resulting in 84 fraudulent transactions in Florida alone through nine debit cards linked to the conspirators.
Green was identified as the ringleader in the scheme through government-issued IDs, multiple aliases, store surveillance video, return data, and bank records, according to the attorney general. She was also linked to co-subjects Albert Junior Boyce, Jr., Diana Rochelle Harris, and David Lee Griffin through activity into April 2021.
She faces up to 75 years in prison. Chief Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Tim Donnelly and Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Paul Thomas prosecuted the case in the Twentieth Judicial Circuit of Florida.
Green's sentencing is set for August 3.
