A Georgia woman faces up to 75 years in a Florida prison after abruptly halting her own trial to plead no contest to running a highly sophisticated, multi-state retail fraud ring that targeted TJX Companies Inc. stores.
Santina Green, also known as Santina Hill, of Decatur, Georgia, entered an open plea to the bench in Lee County’s Twentieth Judicial Circuit. The sudden plea came as statewide prosecutors began flying in a massive wave of witnesses from England, Massachusetts, Virginia, and various Florida counties, including Pasco, Sarasota, and Miami-Dade.
Green was staring down heavy evidence regarding her central role in an organized scheme that managed to drain more than $50,000 from Florida stores alone, and up to $300,000 nationwide, through a web of fraudulent refunds.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement launched an investigation into a bizarre pattern of high-value area rug returns—valued between $400 and $1,000 each—occurring between November 2020 and May 2021.
According to investigators, the group’s method was remarkably calculated. They would buy expensive rugs at TJX “combo” stores using debit cards, immediately execute a “change-of-mind” return, and pocket the original receipt. From there, the crew traveled to other TJX locations, including TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods, using that same receipt or a duplicate to return cheap, inferior, non-TJX rugs bought elsewhere. To pull it off, they even forged “silent price coding” on the cheap rugs to make them look like the genuine, high-end products.
The ring exploited a specific vulnerability in the retailer’s infrastructure: a time delay in the digital reconciliation between “combo” stores and standalone stores’ point-of-sale systems.
This loophole allowed them to score multiple cash or debit refunds on a single receipt before the company’s national system could flag the fraud. Authorities eventually linked nine specific debit cards to 84 separate fraudulent transactions across Florida.
Law enforcement pinned Green as the mastermind behind the operation using store surveillance footage, detailed return data, bank records, and government-issued IDs tied to her multiple aliases. The paper trail also connected her to co-defendants Albert Junior Boyce, Jr., Diana Rochelle Harris, and David Lee Griffin, with the illegal activity stretching deep into April 2021.
“This conviction holds a fraudster accountable for leading a sophisticated racketeering scheme that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars across multiple states,” Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a statement. “Thanks to FDLE and our statewide prosecutors, this organized fraud ring has been stopped. We will continue our fight against retail fraud to protect Florida businesses and keep prices down for families.”
Chief Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Tim Donnelly and Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Paul Thomas handled the prosecution for the state. Green is officially scheduled for sentencing on August 3, 2026.
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