ST. PETERSBURG, FL \u2014 Two St. Petersburg men were arrested after a years-long retail theft investigation, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said in a news release. <\/p>\n
Raydel Amado Gines Prieto, 52, and Erisniel Melgarejo Rodriguez, 36, were each charged with two counts each of organized retail theft. <\/p>\n
At the time of the arrest warrant, Gines Prieto was in custody on unrelated charges, FDLE said. <\/p>\n
Melgarejo Rodriguez was taken into custody on the FDLE arrest warrant on March 2 by the Pinellas County Sheriff\u2019s Office. He was booked into the Pinellas County Jail. <\/p>\n
FDLE\u2019s Organized Retail Crime Squad launched the investigation in December 2023 after asset protection representatives from a major retailer reported two people stealing from home improvement stores across multiple west Florida counties. <\/p>\n
The investigation found that the merchandise was stolen using different methods, including under-scanning items at self-checkout kiosks, fulfilling fraudulent returns and exiting stores with shopping carts of unpaid merchandise, FDLE said. <\/p>\n
The thefts resulted in a loss of more than $370,000 in stolen merchandise.<\/p>\n
Agents identified Gines Prieto and Melgarejo Rodriguez as the suspects. Further investigation linked the pair to more than 150 retail theft incidents since August 2023.<\/p>\n
See Also:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, FL \u2014 Two St. Petersburg men were arrested after a years-long retail theft investigation, the Florida…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-187259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}