Employee arrested for stealing thousands of dollars with toy bills

2022-06-16 05:34:53 By : Ms. Fiona Li

A Home Depot employee in the United States has been arrested after trading $387,500 in real dollars for toy bills over the past four years.According to police reports, Adrián Jean Pineda stole about $4,000 from him through bills he bought on Amazon at a branch located in the city of Tempe, Arizona.The man allegedly received the amount of money from the store records and replaced it with the toy dollars.The counterfeit currency is commonly used as part of props in movies, series and plays, and is even marked as "fake," Secret Service agents in charge of the investigation said in a report obtained by The New York Times.The bills had the word "Playmoney" as a serial number and the legend "For Movie Prop Use Only."Apparently Jean Pineda managed to carry out the fraud for four years thanks to his position as a vault associate that allowed him to be in contact with the daily profits of the store, in fact, the man collected the real money every day and then deposited it in a Wells Fargo bank account."He was in a very good position to commit the crime," Franks Boudreaux, the Secret Service agent in charge of the Phoenix case, said in a report.Meanwhile, the play money was mixed with part of the real sales and collected by bank personnel to deposit it as real money.Home Depot became aware of the theft after bank executives spotted a large number of counterfeit bills coming from the Tempe branch and raised alerts with US law enforcement authorities, including the Secret Service.Likewise, the store began to register significant daily losses since 2018 due to several thousand dollars exchanged for false bills and identified in the deposits.It was not until December 2021 that official investigations began for fraud and diversion of money after the store registered a loss greater than previous years.PLAY MONEY: Court docs detail Secret Service investigation into Adrian Pineda, a Home Depot employee accused of spending nearly $400K in counterfeit notes at Tempe store from 2018-2022.Investigators say he bought prop money off Amazon.A pack of 100 individual $100 notes cost $9.pic.twitter.com/It11Cd97ixFollowing initial findings, Pineda was arrested at the store and agents seized at least $5,000 in counterfeit cash and recovered $5,300 in real money;They also found $22,000 in real currency in his house while conducting a search.According to an affidavit, Pineda was carrying $800 to $1,200 of fake $100 dollars each time he planned to do the robbery;at the end of the day the employees brought him the sales in cash and he was in charge of mixing the counterfeit money with some real bills.When the investigators reviewed the security cameras, they realized that the man did it at least 16 times in the last months, and they also began to suspect him when they realized that he led a luxurious lifestyle and more expensive than a average employee can afford.They also reviewed his online purchase history and found that the suspect had purchased huge amounts of play money over the past four years.“It was evident that he was spending much more than he was earning,” Boudreaux added.Don't miss out on the latest Vive Usa news on Google News, follow us hereReceive in your email the most outstanding news to travel, work and live in the USCopyright © All rights reserved |EL UNIVERSAL, National Journalistic Company.In the absence of prior authorization, the publication, retransmission, editing and any other use of the contents is expressly prohibited.