Two men have been charged with running an organized retail theft ring targeting Lowe\u2019s Home Improvement stores in eastern Pennsylvania that resulted in nearly $100,000 in loss, according to the state Office of Attorney General.<\/p>\n
Jose Gomez and Ysaias Arajuo, no ages or addresses given, are accused of targeting home-improvement stores in Luzerne, Bucks, Lehigh, Northampton, Monroe, Montgomery, Philadelphia and Pike counties.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said the pair used information stolen from Lowe\u2019s customer accounts to steal $99,689 in merchandise. As part of the scheme, the men used self-checkout kiosks to make purchases using cellphones that were linked to stolen customer accounts, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Customers disputed the charges and their banks declined to pay Lowe\u2019s, sticking the company with the cost of the theft.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese defendants orchestrated a sophisticated scheme that targeted unsuspecting customers as well as Lowe\u2019s businesses across numerous counties,\u201d Attorney General Dave Sunday said in a statement. \u201cOrganized retail theft impacts consumers who will be forced to pay higher prices for goods as businesses raise prices to recover losses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both men are charged with felony counts of corrupt organizations, organized retail theft, theft by unlawful taking and related offenses.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Gomez has been arrested and that Arajuo has a warrant out for his arrest.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: October 23, 2025 at 3:47 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two men have been charged with running an organized retail theft ring targeting Lowe\u2019s Home Improvement stores in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[197,202,433,182,803,2941,200,139,434,28,30,29,1212,4399,10356],"class_list":["post-13610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-bucks-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-monroe-county","tag-montgomery-county","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-philadelphia-county","tag-pike-county","tag-top-stories-trt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}