July 9, 2026

Organized Retail Kingpin Faces 75 Years in Prison

By J. Thomas Wade
Blue RAM Media/Gulf Coast News

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. A retail caper involving over $300,000 of rugs has ended with one person heading to federal prison.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Tuesday that the mastermind who was arrested after a multi-state investigation won’t be shopping for carpet anytime soon.

The Georgia woman, identified in the court documents as Santina Green, also known as Santina Hill, of Decatur, Georgia, entered an open plea of no contest to racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, and fraud charges related to an organized retail crime operation.

The woman is accused of helping orchestrate a retail fraud scheme that prosecutors say stole up to $300,000 from TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods stores.

Organized retail theft involves a scheme to steal mass quantities of merchandise and either sell it on the internet or at flea markets or sometimes through small retail shops and usually has a kingpin or mastermind and employs others who do the stealing.

Authorities said Green was identified as the primary suspect through government-issued identification, multiple aliases, store surveillance footage, return data and bank records. Investigators also linked her to co-subjects Albert Junior Boyce Jr., Diana Rochelle Harris and David Lee Griffin.

Prosecutors said Green continued participating in the scheme through April 2021.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, Green played a central role in a scheme that defrauded TJX Companies Inc. stores of more than $50,000 in Florida and as much as $300,000 overall through repeated fraudulent refunds.

This conviction holds a fraudster accountable for leading a sophisticated racketeering scheme that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars across multiple states.”

“Thanks to FDLE and our statewide prosecutors, this organized fraud ring has been stopped. We will continue our fight against retail fraud to protect Florida businesses and keep prices down for families.” Uthmeier said.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation focused on fraudulent returns of high-value area rugs priced between $400 and $1,000 between November 2020 and May 2021.

Investigators said members of the group would purchase expensive rugs at TJX “combo” stores using debit cards and then immediately make a “change-of-mind” return while keeping the original receipt. Authorities said the same receipt, or a duplicate, was later used at other TJX locations to return cheaper, non-TJX rugs that had been purchased elsewhere and altered with forged “silent price coding” to resemble authentic products.

According to prosecutors, the operation exploited delays in reconciliation between combo-store and standalone-store point-of-sale systems, allowing multiple refunds to be issued on a single receipt before the transactions were flagged nationally.

Investigators identified nine debit cards tied to the suspects and linked them to 84 fraudulent transactions in Florida.

The plea came during Green’s trial in the Twentieth Judicial Circuit in Lee County. The Attorney General’s Office said statewide prosecutors had brought in witnesses from England, Massachusetts, Virginia, Pasco County, Sarasota County and Miami-Dade County before Green entered the plea.

Green faces up to 75 years in the Florida Department of Corrections. Sentencing is scheduled for August. 3, 2026, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

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