GLENDALE : 5th Employee Held in Credit Card Fraud

A 23-year-old salesman at the Glendale Home Depot store has been arrested on credit card fraud charges, marking the fifth arrest in an investigation into suspected illegal activities by store employees, police said Tuesday.

Jose Nectally Perez was scheduled to be arraigned this week in Glendale Superior Court on felony charges of conspiracy to commit credit card fraud. Police and store security officials believe that Perez used illegally encoded credit cards to ring up about $20,000 worth of building materials.

Ron Schultz, a loss prevention manager for Home Depot, said the store began investigating possible employee involvement in a credit card scam about three months ago after several purchases were traced to fraudulent credit cards.

Schultz said store security officials believe that Perez’s arrest may be connected to the arrest of four other employees in early May. Police suspect that the employees are responsible for illegally charging hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise.

“We feel the cases are related, but this is an ongoing investigation and we can’t comment on the details,” Schultz said.

Police reportedly are also seeking one or more suspects believed to have supplied the accused store employees with illegally re-encoded credit cards that were used to purchase home improvement materials. Schultz said it is not known what the employees may have received in exchange for their participation in the scam. At least one of the employees charged is involved in a home improvement-type business, he said.

“We want to stress that this did not involve the use of customers’ credit cards,” Schultz added. “This is a situation in which people outside the company are coming into the store and using Home Depot people to commit crimes.”

Last month, two male and two female Home Depot workers ranging in age from 19 to 24 were arrested on similar charges and admitted being involved in illegal transactions totaling between $50,000 and $100,000, but police estimated the amount of the thefts to be even higher.