Officials have charged a fourth suspect in a fraud scam that caused Home Depot stores in Chicago to lose a massive chunk of money.
In an article published Thursday, CWB Chicago said it reported in May the stores were defrauded by several individuals who racked up $900 credits over 6,000 times for one purchase a few years prior:
Officials said the scam began in March 2020 when someone purchased more than $6,000 from the home improvement chain’s 2570 North Elston location. Days later, someone returned to the store and said the purchase was for a tax-exempt church. A store employee accepted the tax-exempt documents and issued the representative a $900 gift card for the tax value.
Taxes on the purchase were $555, and that receipt was recycled for three years to make over 6,000 gift cards. Many of those cards had $900 on them.
“Cashiers scanned the receipt bar code from an accomplice’s phone each time, manually entered the tax exemption information, and then cut a gift card for the difference,” the report continued, noting some of the cashiers made several gift cards for the same purchase at one time, and some had a copy of the receipt saved on their phones to use.
6000 paper trails to nowhere.