A Connecticut couple were charged with being part of an organized retail theft operation that is suspected of stealing about $1 million in Lululemon merchandise across several states, authorities said.
The couple, Jadion Anthony Richards, 44, and Akwele Nickeisha Lawes-Richards, 45, of Danbury, Connecticut, were each charged with one felony count of organized retail theft this month in connection with crimes that began in September, according to the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office in Minnesota.
They were arrested at a Lululemon store in Woodbury, Minnesota, one day after they went to a Lululemon store in Roseville, Minnesota, where they and an unidentified man stole 45 items worth nearly $5,000, according to the charges.
An investigator for Lululemon, who is identified in court documents only by the initials R.P., said that the couple began by stealing from Minnesota stores in Edina, Minneapolis and Minnetonka.
The investigator said that the couple had also hit Lululemon stores in Connecticut, Colorado, New York and Utah.
After their arrest, police searched a hotel room in Bloomington, Minnesota, where the couple had been staying, and found a dozen suitcases with $50,000 worth of Lululemon attire, with price tags still attached, according to court records.
The investigator said that Richards would first enter a store and buy an item or two, like shorts and a T-shirt.
The couple would then remove a security tag from another item in the store and attach the tag to one of the items that Richards had bought. Court records said they used an unidentified tool to remove the tags.
Next, Lawes-Richards and a third person would hide merchandise under their clothes, and they’d walk out of the store just ahead of Richards, the investigator said.
When the store’s alarm would sound, Richards would show his bag to Lululemon workers. Inside the bag would be the items he paid for, one of which had a security tag attached, the investigator said.
Amid the distraction, Lawes-Richards and the third person would leave with the stolen goods. They would not be stopped because store workers assumed that it was Lawes-Richards’ bag that had set off the alarm, according to court records.
The couple would take all the stolen items to another store to exchange them without a receipt in a transaction known as an “unverified exchange,” court records show.
The new items would slightly exceed the value of the stolen ones, and the couple would pay the difference, prompting the store to issue them a receipt. Then they would take the stolen items, and the newly obtained receipt, to a different store to return everything and receive a refund.
Lululemon, an athleisure apparel maker known for its leggings, said in court records that it estimated that it had lost close to $1 million because of the theft ring.
Richards and Lawes-Richards appeared in court on Nov. 18 and posted bail, according to the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office.
They each face up to 15 years in prison and a $35,000 fine. It was not immediately clear whether the couple had lawyers.
“We will do everything in our power to hold these defendants accountable and continue to work with our law enforcement partners and retail merchants to put a stop to retail theft in our community,” Dennis Gerhardstein, spokesperson for the county attorney’s office, said in a statement.
This is the first case that the county is prosecuting under a state law, enacted last year, that addresses organized retail theft.
The law increased penalties when the intent is to resell items, and not to shoplift goods for personal use.
A person is guilty of organized retail theft, the law says, if he or she is working with at least one other person in “a retail theft enterprise”; was previously involved in at least two separate retail thefts in a six-month period; and tried to sell the goods or return them for anything of value.
The National Retail Federation is no longer publishing its data on inventory lost to theft and errors, also known as “shrink.” In its most recent report, using data from 2022, the group estimated losses to U.S. retailers to be about $112 billion per year.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
