Los Angeles police and regional partners say they have dismantled the largest Home Depot theft operation in the company’s history, a sprawling retail crime ring that treated big-box aisles like a warehouse to be emptied at will. Investigators report that the crackdown led to 14 arrests and the seizure of roughly $3.7 million in suspected stolen merchandise, a haul that underscores how sophisticated shoplifting schemes have become in Southern California. The case, built over months of surveillance and coordination, offers a rare inside look at how organized crews quietly strip value from a national retailer and, ultimately, from everyday shoppers.
At the center of the case is a network accused of hitting dozens of stores across multiple counties, then funneling the goods into a shadow marketplace that thrives far from the fluorescent lights of a typical Home Depot. Authorities describe a methodical operation that treated theft like a full-time job, with crews allegedly moving from location to location, day after day, rarely taking a break. For law enforcement and prosecutors, the bust is both a headline-grabbing victory and a test of whether existing tools are enough to keep pace with increasingly professionalized retail crime.
The scale of a record-breaking retail crime ring
Investigators say the group’s reach was staggering, stretching across Southern California and touching nearly every major county in the region. According to authorities, the ring targeted 71 different Home Depot locations in Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino, a footprint that reads like a map of the chain’s regional presence. Officials have linked the crew to hundreds of thefts, often carried out in quick succession, with teams allegedly moving from store to store to avoid detection while still exploiting similar layouts and security routines.
Law enforcement agencies describe the case as the largest Home Depot theft ring they have ever confronted, both in terms of geography and the value of the goods involved. Police searches uncovered an estimated $3.7 million in Home Depot property tied to the ring, along with roughly $800,000 in laundered cash that prosecutors say reflects the downstream profits of the scheme. Officials have also pegged the broader impact of the thefts at more than $10 million in losses, a figure that includes both stolen inventory and the costs of investigating and prosecuting the case.
How “Operation Killswitch” unraveled the scheme
The investigation that ultimately took down the ring was anything but routine. Authorities in Southern California launched a coordinated effort, dubbed Operation Killswitch, bringing together local police, sheriff’s departments and prosecutors who were all seeing similar patterns of theft at Home Depot stores. In a press conference Tuesday morning, officials detailed how Investig teams pieced together surveillance footage, license plate data and in-store reports to connect incidents that initially looked like isolated shoplifting cases. Over time, the picture sharpened into a single, highly organized network that treated county lines as little more than checkpoints on a daily route…