A Georgia woman faces up to 75 years in prison in Florida after unexpectedly stopping her own trial to plead no contest to organizing a highly complex, multi-state retail fraud operation targeting TJX Companies Inc. stores.
Santina Green, also known as Santina Hill, of Decatur, Georgia, made an open plea before the bench of Lee County’s Twentieth Judicial Circuit. The surprise plea came as statewide prosecutors began bringing in witnesses from England, Massachusetts, Virginia, and several Florida counties, including Pasco, Sarasota, and Miami-Dade.
Green was confronted with overwhelming evidence revealing her major role in an orchestrated plan that managed to siphon more than $50,000 from Florida retailers alone, and up to $300,000 countrywide, via a web of false refunds.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement initiated an investigation into an unusual pattern of high-value area rug returns ranging from $400 to $1,000 between November 2020 and May 2021.
According to the investigators, the group’s strategy was extremely methodical. They would buy pricey carpets at TJX “combo” stores using debit cards, instantly conduct a “change-of-mind” return, and pocket the original receipt. From there, the group went to other TJX stores, including TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods, and used the same receipt or a duplicate to return cheap, inferior, non-TJX carpets purchased elsewhere. To pull it off, they even put “silent price coding” on the low-cost rugs to make them appear like real, high-end products.
The ring took advantage of a specific vulnerability in the retailer’s infrastructure: a time lag in the digital reconciliation between “combo” stores and standalone retailers’ point-of-sale systems.
This weakness allowed them to earn many cash or debit refunds on a single receipt before the company’s national system could notice the scam. Authorities eventually linked nine distinct debit cards to 84 different fraudulent purchases in Florida.
Law police identified Green as the brains of the operation using store surveillance footage, detailed return data, bank records, and government-issued IDs linked to her various aliases. The paper trail also linked her to co-defendants Albert Junior Boyce, Jr., Diana Rochelle Harris, and David Lee Griffin, with the illicit activities continuing into April 2021.
“This conviction holds a fraudster accountable for leading a sophisticated racketeering scheme that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars across multiple states,” a statement from Attorney General James Uthmeier read. “Thanks to the FDLE and our statewide prosecutors, this organized fraud organization has been busted. “We will continue to fight retail fraud to protect Florida businesses and keep prices low for families.”
The state’s prosecution was handled by Chief Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Tim Donnelly and Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Paul Thomas. Green is officially slated to be sentenced on August 3, 2026.
Leave a Reply