Pair charged in Lowe’s theft scheme
Police say products were faked as returns
A man and a woman accused of making multiple trips to a Lowe’s store in Summerlin, loading home improvement products onto carts and then having them charged as returns are now facing felony burglary and theft charges.
Jonathan Chris Cohen, 27, and Alexandra Demander, 21, were arrested Friday after surrendering two months after their last fake return of merchandise, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
The pair first entered the Lowe’s at 851 S. Pavilion Center Drive empty-handed on Nov. 13, pushed a flat bed cart to the back of the store, loaded two large boxes containing shower surround kits at $799 each and walked to the returns desk, police reported.
Authorities say Cohen handed over his Mastercard and requested a refund from the clerk, who scanned the products and placed $1,598 onto his account, after which Cohen and Demander left the place.
They repeated the process at the same store on Nov. 15, with five packages of flooring underlayment together worth $301, on Dec. 18 with 11 boxes of laminate flooring totaling $677 and later that day with 11 more boxes of underlayment worth $743, police said.
Sarah Baker, senior asset protection manager for the Lowe’s Pavilion Center outlet, examined security footage of the two, pulled receipts from Cohen’s credit card, searched for images of Cohen on the social media venue Instagram and took screenshots of him, turning them over to police.
The footage shows Cohen and Demander entering the business without anything, then appearing at the return area with the items before exiting the business, police said.
Baker used Cohen’s credit card to trace him to a residence in Encino, California. Police searched their database, located a report Cohen filed last July about a break-in at a vacant house he owned in the 1200 block of Mallard Street in Las Vegas and took down the mobile number he listed.
From Demander’s driver’s license information, police tracked her to an apartment in the 9000 block of West Warm Springs Road in Las Vegas.
When detectives called Cohen, he said he was in New York and would have to book a flight to Las Vegas. He called police with Demander on speakerphone, and they both agreed to hire an attorney, fly back to town and give up peacefully.
They appeared Friday in Justice Court on suspicion of four courts of felony burglary of a business, one count of felony theft and conspiracy to commit burglary, a gross misdemeanor, court records show.
Both were released, told by a judge to appear in court for a status check on March 21 and as a bail condition, ordered to stay away from that Lowe’s store.