Four More Individuals Plead Guilty in $6 Million Home Depot Gift Card Scam
CHICAGO — Four additional individuals have pleaded guilty in connection to a large-scale gift card scam that defrauded Chicago-area Home Depot stores of over $6 million. While all four defendants received probation, one also served time in jail as part of their sentence.
The scheme first came to light in the spring of 2023, with officials revealing that scammers had exploited Home Depot stores in the city by obtaining $900 credits over 6,000 times for a single purchase made three years prior.
The fraudulent activity began in March 2020 when a purchase exceeding $6,000 was made at the company’s 2570 North Elston location. Subsequently, the scammer returned to the store, claimed the purchase was for a tax-exempt church, and obtained a $900 gift card for the tax amount. The taxes for the purchase only amounted to $555, as per a Chicago police report.
Over time, the scam evolved and grew in complexity. Unknown individuals utilized the same receipt to acquire $900 gift cards 15 times in 2020, 33 times in 2021, and significantly increased to 1,372 gift cards in 2022. In the following year, a staggering 3,200 $900 gift cards were issued for the same receipt between January and mid-May, prompting the initiation of arrests.
As the scheme progressed, some participants became increasingly brazen, with certain cashiers issuing multiple gift cards for the same purchase in a single transaction. In some instances, individuals stored a copy of the receipt on their personal phones to issue gift cards for themselves.
Christiana Westbrooks, 39, admitted to theft amounting to $100,000 to $500,000 and received a two-year probation sentence from Judge Thomas Byrne. Westbrooks utilized her unique teller code to issue $900 gift cards over 1,000 times in the previous year. She was apprehended with $2,980 in cash and allegedly confessed to receiving $100 for each gift card issued.
Sharon Dwyer, 47, also pleaded guilty to theft within the same monetary range and was sentenced to two years of probation and 206 days in jail by Judge Byrne. Dwyer issued over 1,500 gift cards totaling $1.3 million and allegedly received $30 for each card issued. In addition to providing cards to scammers posing as customers, Dwyer was accused of scanning an image of the 2020 receipt from her phone to issue $900 gift cards for herself. She was found with $4,420 in cash upon arrest.
Rosa Reynoso-Rodriguez, 35, received a two-year probation sentence after pleading guilty to theft of $10,000 to $100,000. Reynoso-Rodriguez, employed at the 2570 North Elston location, issued $900 gift cards 313 times, totaling $281,700, with a significant portion issued within a single week.
Lamont Thompson, 50, was implicated as one of the “customers” who presented the receipt to receive gift cards. He pleaded guilty to theft amounting to $10,000 to $100,000 and was sentenced to two years of probation by Byrne. Thompson faced a more severe charge of operating a continuing financial crime enterprise, which was dropped upon his guilty plea.
Two other individuals, Tyler Clark, 26, and Thomas McNeal, 64, had previously pleaded guilty and received two-year probation sentences from Judge Byrne.
Authorities have not disclosed publicly how the fraudulently obtained gift cards were converted into cash or how the scheme operated for three years, generating thousands of $900 gift cards from a single $6,000 receipt.
