The fourth man involved in a “ticket-switching” scam that defrauded Home Depot out of more than $600,000 was sentenced to prison Thursday.
Arthur James Freeman, 54, of Atlanta, was ordered to serve six months in prison and to pay $113,527 in restitution.
On Oct. 28, Robert Lee Hatcher III and Willie Dewayne Lynch, both of Atlanta, were sentenced. Hatcher received a five-year sentence and was ordered to pay $647,391 in restitution; Lynch was sentenced to three years and must also pay $647,391 in restitution. On Oct. 6, Andrew Oliver, 62, of Stone Mountain, was sentenced to three years and was ordered to pay $86,858 in restitution.
Hatcher, Lynch, and Oliver bought merchandise at Home Depot stores in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, according to U.S. attorney Sally Quillian Yates. Prior to buying the merchandise, they “switched” tickets — covering the UPC labels on high-priced items with labels they removed from lower-priced items.
The men then bought the merchandise for the lower price. They then removed the lower-priced UPC label, revealing the original, higher-priced UPC label. Next, the defendants returned the merchandise to the Home Depot stores and got refund cards in the amounts of the actual (and higher) price of the merchandise, according to Yates.
Hatcher, Lynch and Oliver then sold the refund cards to Freeman in exchange for cash at 60 percent of the actual value contained on the refund cards, Yates said. Freeman used the refund cards to buy merchandise at Home Depot stores, which he used to stock two retail stores he owned in Atlanta known as “Bargain Wholesale.”
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