US: Woman stole goods & sold on eBay for 19 years, sentenced to prison with $3.8M penalty

A Texan woman was sent to jail for shoplifting items for over 19 years and reselling them on eBay. In an official press release, the US Justice Department said that Kim Richardson, 63-year-old Dallas resident, was sentenced to 54 months in prison and $3.8 million in restitution. The woman "used shoplifting tools to disable security devices and left the store by putting the stolen goods in a large black bag that was carrying them,” then sold them on the internet in fraud merchandise scheme, according to a department press release.

US District Judge Andrew Hanen ordered her to serve a total of 54 months in federal prison to be immediately followed by three years of supervised release. Disguised as a shopper, the woman thief was involved in "multi-million dollar interstate theft ring," which ran from August 2000 to April 2019, federal agencies revealed in the release. She was also accused of travelling across the United States and stealing goods, then later selling them. "She used shoplifting tools to disable security devices and left the store by putting the stolen goods in a large black bag that she carried," the press release mentioned. "Richardson helped sell the items online, as well as packing and shipping the stolen items.” 

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Secret Service and FBI agents' investigation

While the court said it was “virtually impossible” to identify all the victims of Richardson’s fake scheme, the court sentenced her for marketing, selling and distributing stolen items via direct internet sales and coning these several customers. She attracted the buyers and shipped the items via the US mail, Federal Express and United Parcel Service at their home address. Not just that, the woman also did business with numerous retail stores and owned myriad of tools used to disable security devices at shops for the burglary. Via CCTV footages, the federal agents found the woman carrying the items mostly in black bags while exiting the shops and cracked at least four PayPal accounts linked in her name in an investigated conducted by Secret Service and FBI agents. She was ordered by the judge to voluntarily surrender to a US Bureau of Prisons facility. 

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