Drug-addicted thieves stole electronics, SC store owners resold them on eBay, prosecutor says
A couple was convicted Monday in connection with running a criminal operation through their South Carolina electronics store, and now they face the prospect of spending decades behind bars, a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Reboot in Greenville is not the used electronics store that it represents itself as on its website, according to the news release. Prosecutors said it was actually a place for shoplifters to sell stolen goods to store owners — 41-year-old Jonathan E. Field and 40-year-old Shena J. Field — who then resold the electronics online to unsuspecting customers.
Many of the shoplifting suspects are drug addicts, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in the news release. They would sell the “new-in-the-box stolen items” to the Fields “for a fraction of the items’ retail value,” according to the release.
The Fields, who are Mauldin residents, would then post the electronics on eBay and would sell them to customers who had no idea they were buying stolen goods, federal prosecutors said in the news release. Over the course of the crime, law enforcement said “the Fields received hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen merchandise,” according to the news release.
Court records show that some of the shoplifting suspects brought stolen goods to the Fields’ store “almost every day, and sometimes multiple times per day,” the news release said.
In other circumstances, the Fields or other store employees would meet up with the shoplifting suspects outside of the store, after it had closed for the day, to receive the stolen merchandise, according to the news release.
In some cases, the shoplifting suspects were instructed by the Fields specifically which items to steal because the couple had “oversold” it online and wanted to “avoid bad feedback” on eBay and from its users, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in the news release.
After 13 co-conspirators “pleaded guilty and admitted their involvement in the Reboot criminal enterprise,” the Fields were each found guilty of a conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, according to the news release.
The Fields face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, federal prosecutors said in the news release.
