The manager of a Miami-Dade Home Depot store has been arrested in a years-long fraud scheme involving merchandise markdowns that cost the home improvement company millions, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Mauricio Jimenez, 48, of Hialeah, was arrested Tuesday on charges of grand theft over $100,000 and organized fraud of $50,000 or more, Miami-Dade jail records showed.<\/p>\n
According to an arrest report, Jimenez was the manager of the Home Depot at 7899 West Flagler Street and had previously worked at the store at 13895 West Okeechobee Road.<\/p>\n
Because of his position, Jimenez had the authority to approve price adjustments including markdowns and had access to internal sales and inventory systems.<\/p>\n
The investigation began after Home Depot’s Assurance & Advisory Management Program members discovered a high markdown order staged at Jimenez’s previous store.<\/p>\n
Home Depot observed multiple similar transactions with Jimenez involving “highly excessive” markdowns for repeat customers, the report said.<\/p>\n
The transactions involved unusually large markdowns applied to merchandise sold in bulk quantities to certain businesses including items like power tools and in-sink garbage disposals, the report said.<\/p>\n
The high markdown activity had ended at the previous store when Jimenez left and picked up when he started working at the West Flagler Street location, the report said.<\/p>\n
Investigators uncovered that from December 2023 to April 2026, Jimenez was involved in no fewer than 4,500 separate orders involving unauthorized markdowns, the report said.<\/p>\n
The transactions were structured to avoid internal detection thresholds, the report said.<\/p>\n
The total gross sales involving the unauthorized markdowns were around $55 million, and due to markdowns of about $24 million, the net sales were around $30 million, the report said.<\/p>\n
A negative sales margin of -$4.3 million was calculated for the transactions, indicating that not only was no money made on the sales, but they cost Home Depot over $4 million, the report said.<\/p>\n
“The defendant engaged in a deliberate, ongoing, and sophisticated scheme to defraud the Home Depot over a period of approximately two and one-half years, resulting in substantial financial loss,” the report said. “As a result of the defendant’s scheme into these sales, he exceeded his sales goals resulting in being compensated by Home Depot with larger bonuses.”<\/p>\n
Jimenez was arrested at the store and booked into jail. He appeared before a judge on Wednesday who set his bond at $15,000 and ordered him to stay away from the store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The manager of a Miami-Dade Home Depot store has been arrested in a years-long fraud scheme involving merchandise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124,373],"class_list":{"0":"post-242089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-miami","9":"tag-miami-headlines","10":"tag-miami-news","11":"tag-miami-dade-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242089","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=242089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}