Florida Pastor Accused of Orchestrating the Theft of Millions in Home Depot Merchandise

While St. Petersburg, Fla., pastor Robert Dell projected an image as a philanthropist, shepherding addicts as they crawled their way to recovery and a normal life, prosecutors say he was organizing the theft of millions of dollars of merchandise from Home Depot.

Dell, who ran The Rock Community Church and Transformation Center, is accused of running a criminal enterprise involving the very people he professed to help.

He has pleaded not guilty.

In a news release and in court documents, prosecutors say Dell asked the people in his recovery program to pilfer items like drills from Home Depot stores throughout the St. Petersburg region, and then sell them to him.

Dell and three co-conspirators, including his mother and his wife, would then sell the drills on eBay, prosecutors allege.

The group sold around $3 million worth of Home Depot merchandise between 2016 and Dell’s arrest over the summer, prosecutors say.

The Florida man’s attorneys have not commented publicly on the case.

Dell is what's known as a “fence,” an informal term for a ringleader who tells a group of underlings to steal in exchange for small cash payments, and then resells those goods for a profit, Scott Glenn, vice president of asset protection for Home Depot, told The Wall Street Journal.

“The fence is crucial,” he said. “A successful organized retail-crime organization has to have somebody pulling the strings.”

Retailed giants like Target, Best Buy and Home Depot have warned of a retail theft spike in recent months with ever-escalating levels of alarm and pictures abound on social media and in news outlets of shattered glass and scattered merchandise at stores hit by flash mobs looking to grab expensive merchandise.

Executives and law enforcement officials pin the blame partly on organized theft rings that snatch goods off store shelves and then post the merchandise for sale on marketplaces like Amazon.

Recent laws have targeted such crime rings with enhanced disclosure rules and states have formed retail theft task forces to better combat criminal groups organizing widespread theft from stores and pharmacies.

A news release on the Florida Attorney General’s website says Dell’s arrest was possible thanks to its own efforts to crack down on organized shoplifting rings.

Whether or not retail theft is actually getting worse remains a matter of debate. The National Retail Federation tracks reports of so-called "shrink" — a catchall term referring to all lost merchandise — and says the problem has gotten worse in recent years. 

Although experts note that stores tend to automatically attribute losses to retail theft, police departments don’t separate shoplifting from other forms of theft, resulting in a deficit of reliable information on the subject.