Man cheats Home Depot out of $300,000 with return schemeBy Chris Pandolfo, Fox Business
August 4, 2023
A Connecticut man allegedly defrauded Home Depot of nearly $300,000 with a non-receipted return scheme, federal prosecutors say.
Charging documents allege that Alexandre Henrique Costa-Mota, 26, of West Hartford, Connecticut, walked into Home Depot stores in eight states, grabbed expensive doors and then returned them without a receipt in exchange for store credit.
Costa-Morta was detained without bail after a judge in federal court in Rhode Island entered not-guilty pleas on his behalf to charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the U.S. attorney’s office in Providence said in a statement Wednesday.
An attorney representing Costa-Mota did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The alleged fraud took place between June 2021 and February 2022, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors say Costa-Mota entered stores empty-handed, “dressed to appear like a contractor.” He would then collect Andersen doors and bring them to each store’s service department, where he made non-receipted returns of the doors.
Each time he succeeded, Costa-Mota was given a store credit that he later redeemed at other stores in Connecticut and neighboring states. If a store refused to accept the returns, Costa-Mota allegedly took the Andersen doors without paying for them and returned them at other stores for store credit.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2023/08/04/connecticut-man-cheats-home-depot-out-of-300000-with-non-receipted-return-scheme/
