Posted on Sun, Nov. 24, 2002 story:PUB_DESC

Return, discount-card fraud yielded thousands for team, police say

By Matthai Chakko Kuruvila SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

SAN JOSE - Anthony Davenport made his living in the return line at Home Depot -- hundreds of them, in 23 different states, police say.

Printing out fraudulent bar codes in a series of temporary homes, Davenport and two accomplices allegedly would place cheaper price tags on two expensive items, buy them and then return them later at the true price. Then they allegedly sold the cards containing store credit to others at a discount, pocketing the profits.

A Mesquite, Texas, man told police that he was using the cards, which he bought at 70 cents for every dollar of store credit, to build his new home.

In the year before they were arrested at a San Leandro Home Depot, the trio visited at least 307 Home Depot stores, buying the same light fixture and faucet over and over and raking in $45,000 a month, police said. This week, federal authorities froze $822,000 worth of their assets.

"It was their job," said San Leandro Police Detective Cathy Pickard. "They would get up in the morning, and that's what they would do. In the statements one of the guys gave, that's what he said: '(T)his is what we did for a living.'"

Irish immigrants who were living in this country illegally, the trio are believed to be part of a nomadic group called Travelers, or Tinkers, known for their home-improvement swindles.

Davenport, his partner Linda Broderick and their friend John Hay lived as a family and would move from place to place about every two weeks, Pickard said. Even as they wired hundreds of thousands of dollars back to Ireland, they weren't living in paradise.

When they were arrested in June, they were living in Trailer Haven, a San Leandro trailer park where they had one of the high-end units: a 20-foot trailer with a pool attached, Pickard said. They always paid in cash -- though they did offer to sell the trailer park's owner $5,000 in Home Depot store-credit purchase cards at a discount, federal court records allege.

Their plan was simple.

They bought the high-end and low-end model of the same brand of light fixture and faucet. Then, using a hand-held photo scanner, a laptop and a photo-quality printer, the trio would duplicate the bar code for the low-end model of each.

Printing onto a sticker, one of them would go into the store and paste it onto a box for a high-end model and then purchase the product at the lower price.

They would then go to another Home Depot and return it with the sticker removed. The profit on each item's return was approximately $100, Pickard said.

Home Depot used to have a return policy that gave cash back, even without a receipt. Once it shifted to the store credit system, the company began issuing purchase cards, which required a name and identification.

So the trio allegedly started duplicating identification. Davenport had eight different identities, while Broderick and Hay had five and four, respectively.

It would have continued forever had it not been for an employee at the Milpitas Home Depot. The "undercover shopper," who had worked at Home Depot for 10 years, watched Davenport attempt a return and recognized him from an incident three years earlier, when he was caught altering labels. San Leandro police arrested the trio the next day.

Now held in the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, they face several counts of forgery, possession of fake driver's licenses and second-degree commercial burglary in Alameda County Superior Court.

Davenport and Hay have "extensive" criminal records in this country as well as in Ireland, court records show.

Hay told police he didn't feel all that guilty about the scams -- maybe even a little proud.

"To him, he wasn't hurting anyone," Pickard said. "They were stealing from a business. In his mind, they weren't committing a crime."

Pickard said the three were very good at their "job."

"It's brilliant," said Pickard. "I hate to say it ... it's the ultimate scam. You keep moving and you hope you don't get caught.

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2002