A 45-year-old guy from Georgia has been charged with federal crimes for stealing over $800,000 from Home Depot.
The 45-year-old Macon man Yasin Saleem has been charged with conspiracy and wire theft. The charges come from the fact that Saleem and his friends reportedly used fake driver’s licenses to hide their real identities from Home Depot while they stole rental tools and equipment.
The US Department of Justice says they also used bank cards with names on the cards that matched the fake rental licenses. A lot of the time, those debit cards were given before they were used in the scheme, and they only had a small amount of money on them.
The thieves then didn’t return the tools and equipment they had rented, and the fake debit cards didn’t have enough money on them to pay for new things. Saleem and his criminal partners are said to have broken the GPS devices that were attached to the rental gear so that they wouldn’t be found. They may have also used stolen license plates to hide the fact that they were part of the plan.
More than $800,000 worth of tools from Home Depot is said to have been stolen by Saleem and his friends.
On June 25, Saleem was charged. On Friday, he was charged.
Acting Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Atlanta, Sean Burke, said, “Saleem’s retail theft scheme not only cost Home Depot a lot of money, but it also shows how complicated and widespread organized retail crime is.”
Source: GA man indicted for allegedly swindling Home Depot out of more than $800,000
