YORKTOWN — Seven conspirators from the Peninsula stole hundreds of large-screen televisions from retailers up and down the East Coast, the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office said Friday in announcing criminal charges against them.
The group of six men and a woman stole 691 TVs — valued at more than $680,000 — from 321 Walmarts and Sam’s Clubs from Virginia to Florida, the Sheriff’s Office said.
About a quarter of the thefts took place in Virginia: The conspirators stole 187 TVs — valued at about $183,000 — from 34 locations statewide.
“They were doing this on a daily basis,” York-Poquoson Sheriff Ron Montgomery said at a news conference. “It was a huge operation for them … This was their full-time job.”
WATCH: YouTube video footage of Friday’s press conference at the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office.
The Sheriff’s Office got a call in April from Jeffrey Meyer, a Richmond-based Walmart investigator who probes theft in the retail giant’s Mid-Atlantic region.
That call came more than a year after Meyer in May 2023 first noticed an unusual number of TVs were being returned on a particular member’s Sam’s Club account, York Sheriff’s Deputy Layne Forrest said.
“He tracked these subjects for several months,” Forrest said. “He then actually started surveillance on the individuals. He got to understand exactly how the crime was committed.”
Forrest said at least two men at a time would walk into Walmarts or Sam’s Clubs and buy new TVs — typically between 70 and 85 inches in size and priced between $900 and $1,200.
They would then take them to leased box trucks parked nearby.
“They needed vehicles this size just for the sheer size of the televisions they were ultimately stealing,” Forrest explained.
Inside the trucks, the conspirators would carefully remove the TVs from the boxes. They’d peel off the serial number stickers from the back, attaching them instead to the broken TVs that they would put into the boxes in place of the new screens.
Then — often within a couple hours of the original purchases — they would return the boxes to the stores with the broken TVs inside, making it appear to the Walmart store clerks that the cardboard boxes had never been opened.
“There was not a lot questioning,” Forrest said. “It was basically placed right back on the shelf, where an unsuspecting consumer would come and purchase the device and get it home, install it and find that it was completely broken.”
The schemers, he said, would then hawk the new TVs on Facebook Marketplace and other websites for between $650 and $750 apiece.
Many of the 34 targeted stores in Virginia were hit more than once.
The conspirators stole TVs at least five times from the Walmart on Route 17 in York County’s Tabb section, and twice from a Walmart in the Williamsburg area, Forrest said.
The organized ring also stole many TVs from about 40 Walmarts and Sam’s Clubs across North Carolina. They took from many stores in Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama, and even from single stores in Ohio, Kentucky and Louisiana.
Over the past 12 days, the Sheriff’s Office has arrested and charged four Newport News residents in the case: James J. Montgomery, 34; Timothy J. Ricks, 36; Lisa L. Byrd, 35, and Aaron A. Crane, 25.
They face four felony counts — organized retail theft, money laundering, conspiracy to commit a felony, and larceny with the intent to distribute — in York County General District Court.
Byrd and Montgomery were released on bond, while Ricks is being held at the Newport News City Jail and Crane at the Western Tidewater Regional Jail, records show.
Three other men — still at large as of Friday afternoon — face the same four charges: Shawn E. Washington, 44, of Newport News; Craig L. Clary, 34, of Hampton, and Camrin Council, 25, also of Hampton.
“The investigation continues right now to bring all seven to trial in York County,” Montgomery said.
Money laundering, felony conspiracy and larceny together carry a combined potential punishment under state law of up to 70 years behind bars.
Organized retail theft — a new charge added to Virginia’s books only last July — carries up to another 20 years. That charge is designed to go after people who act together to steal more than $5,000 worth of merchandise from retailers within a 90-day period.
Montgomery said he will be talking with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s investigations division next week about the possibility of taking the case federally. Aside from Walmart and Sam’s Club, he said, it appears that other retailers were targeted, too.
“This is a prime example of law enforcement agencies and retailers working together to bring down organized retail groups,” Kyle Wood, the director of the organized retail crime unit of the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, said at Friday’s news conference.
Retail theft in Virginia averages more than $1 billion annually, Montgomery said, citing AG’s office numbers. Many such losses, he said, are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
Peter Dujardin. 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
