A Connecticut couple who authorities say was part of a group that plundered nearly $1 million in goods from Lululemon stores across the U.S. was sentenced to probation Friday in Ramsey County District Court for stealing from several of the retailer’s Twin Cities locations in 2024.

Jadion Anthony Richards, 45, and Akwele Nickeisha Lawes-Richards, 46, appeared by Zoom and in separate hearings and received 15-month stayed prison terms and three years of probation — sentences that fall within state guidelines — after they pleaded guilty to felony organized retail theft.

Akwele Nickeisha Lawes-Richards, left, and Jadion Anthony Richards (Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Lululemon is asking the couple pays just over $8,000 in restitution between them, but the couple is contesting the amount and a hearing will be held to determine what they owe.

The charges, filed against the couple in November 2024, were the first filed in Ramsey County under a state law that took effect in 2023 to address organized retail theft. The cases also mark the county’s first convictions.

Richards and Lawes-Richards’ guilty pleas came a year after they stole just shy of $5,000 worth of goods from the high-end women’s athletic wear retailer’s Rosedale mall store in Roseville. They were arrested the next day after a Lululemon organized retail crime investigator notified police they were in the Woodbury store.

The pleas fell under a “global resolution” agreement that covered charges in Ramsey and Hennepin counties for thefts at Lululemon stores in Edina, Minneapolis, Minnetonka and Roseville. Other charges were dismissed under the plea deal: a second count of organized retail theft in Ramsey County, and two counts of felony theft stemming from cases in Hennepin County.

Theft scheme explained

According to the criminal complaints, Richards had a JW Marriot key card on him when he was arrested on Nov. 14, 2024. Police recovered more than $50,000 in stolen Lululemon goods in his room at the hotel’s Mall of America location in Bloomington.

The Lululemon investigator told Roseville police the couple was alleged to have stolen over $30,000 from local stores between September 2024 and November 2024, and that their group was responsible for almost $1 million in thefts across the country. They allegedly pulled off thefts in Colorado and Utah before arriving in the Twin Cities.

The group usually traveled to an area and hit up Lululemon stores over two days, the complaints say. They then went back to the East Coast, where they made “unverified exchanges” at stores — meaning with no receipts — for other goods, which were later returned to credit cards. After a week or so, the group then headed out again to commit more thefts.

The Lululemon investigator told police that Richards used at least six credit cards to process nearly a half-million in fraudulent returns, the complaints say.

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After a hat trick in the girls hockey Class A state tournament semifinals, Warroad senior Taylor Reese declined to reveal who she would rather face in Saturday’s state title game, Breck or Blake.

She was less reserved two days earlier about the Warriors’ potential semifinal opponent. After Warroad opened the state tournament with a 5-1 win over Luverne, Reese made her preference clear.

“I want to play Dodge County. I think we owe it to them,” she said in the postgame press conference. “Make them feel how we felt last year.”

She was referring to Warroad’s overtime loss to the Wildcats in the 2025 state title game.

On Friday, the girls from Dodge County provided a reminder about being careful what you wish for. The Warriors prevailed in a 6-5 overtime win but not before a season’s worth of momentum changes and drama, as well as Reese’s immediate emergence as a villain for a significant number of Southern Minnesota hockey fans.

“WE WANT WARROAD,” was the chant the Dodge County student section offered as a serenade to Reese when she was on the ice early in the game.

“Um, I did not expect that to happen, but here we are,” Reese said, following the latest chapter in what has to be one of the more unlikely rivalries in Minnesota prep sports.

Google Maps notes that from The Gardens in Warroad, home of the Warriors, to Dodge County Ice Arena in Kasson, home of the Wildcats, it is 425 miles and will take you more than seven hours to drive. And that’s if you don’t hit traffic in the Twin Cities, or hit a deer coming across the Big Bog in a desolate stretch of rural Lake of the Woods County.

Rivalries, it is said, need two things to thrive: geography and history. You would be hard pressed to claim that Warroad and Dodge County are neighborhood rivals, unless that neighborhood stretches from down by Iowa to the shadow of the Canadian border. But in terms of history, it is recent and intense when the Warriors and Wildcats get together in downtown St. Paul.

Thursday’s game was won by Warroad after upset-minded Dodge County held 2-0 and 3-1 leads at various times, and rallied from a pair of goals down to force OT in the final two minutes. It marked the third consecutive year these far-flung frenemies have met in the state tournament. Although, by comparison to 2024 and 2025, this game was relatively low stakes.

Two years ago, Warroad won its third straight state title, beating Dodge County 5-2 in the finale. Last year, the Wildcats turned the tables, getting a textbook “greasy goal” in overtime to bring the program’s first state crown back home to this cooperative of Kasson, Mantorville and Byron.

“We’re meeting them in big games. That’s how rivalries start,” Warroad coach David Marvin said. “That’s a good thing.”

Wildcats coach Jeremy Gunderson is in his 19th season, while Marvin is concluding Season 20, and there have been a few times when one team or the other traversed roughly the entire state to play in the regular season, as well. The Warriors braved a snowstorm to get to Kasson in January 2020 for a game. Gunderson said there were great times on the ice, chasing pucks at the rink and chasing walleyes on Lake of the Woods, when the Wildcats would visit Warroad.

“We used to do their holiday tournaments, and we played for years,” Gunderson said. “(Marvin) used to have an ice fishing operation up there, so we’d take the kids to the holiday tournament and ice fish with the guys.”

With great respect between the two coaches, as far apart as they are on the map, for them to meet in the middle, a few blocks from the State Capitol, seems to make geographical sense.

“We want to beat the metro teams like he does and like anybody else does,” Gunderson said. “We take a lot of pride and want to be the best team down south. We always joke with each other that he wants to own the north. Let’s meet down here and kind of take it to the metro schools.”

In other words, we could surely see the Warriors and the Wildcats meet again, right here, next February.

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By MARK SCOLFORO and PATRICK WHITTLE, Associated Press

CUMBERLAND, Md. (AP) — A member of a group known to outsiders as Zizians that is linked to six deaths was bailed out of jail in Maryland on Friday.

Police in Maryland connected Jack “Ziz” LaSota, Michelle Zajko and Daniel Blank to homicide investigations in California, Pennsylvania and Vermont after a landowner found them living in box trucks at the end of a snow-covered dirt road last February, according to court documents and pretrial testimony.

Blank was bailed out Friday at about noon after posting $15,000. Blank’s attorney Rebecca Lechliter declined comment. Zajko and LaSota remain in custody and are being held without bail.

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Blank’s release includes conditions that he must live alone and submit to GPS tracking.

The deaths linked to the group reached six last year when a U.S. border agent was killed in Vermont. The three members were later arrested on trespassing and gun charges in the woods of western Maryland. Seven of the group’s members are jailed in three states, all awaiting trial.

Maryland state Trooper Brandon Jeffries wrote after their Feb. 16, 2025 arrests that all the “suspects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country and have ties with the Zizians Cult.”

Called “Zizians” by outsiders, the young, highly intelligent computer scientists appear to share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender identity and artificial intelligence. Since 2022, members have been tied to the death of one of their own during an attack on a California landlord, the landlord’s subsequent killing, the shooting deaths of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania, and a highway shootout in Vermont that left the border agent and another Zizian dead.

Jury selection was supposed to start recently in Cumberland, Maryland, where LaSota, Zajko and Blank are charged with possession of LSD and possession with intent to deliver LSD, multiple gun violations, trespassing and hindering a police officer.

The trial was delayed until June, however, after Zajko, who also is charged with resisting arrest, fired her attorney, briefly represented herself and hired a new lawyer.

FORT MYERS, Fla. — By the time Pablo López received a second opinion on his elbow from Dr. Keith Meister, he was already fairly certain he knew what the surgeon would say. In his head, he knew there was only “a tiny, tiny percentage,” chance that he would hear anything other a recommendation that he undergo Tommy John surgery.

The unlikely occurrence didn’t happen.

The Twins’ ace is headed for the season-ending elbow surgery on Wednesday with Meister in Texas to repair a tear in his ulnar collateral ligament.

“We knew what we were looking at,” López said. “I think I’m a pretty realistic person. I know what’s in front of me for the most part, so having made a decision, it’s ironic in a way — it feels good because I know in the long run, it’s going to be the best.”

But that doesn’t make it any easier.

López said the reality of the situation still hasn’t quite hit him yet. He’s still walking into a clubhouse environment he described as “contagious.” But next week, he will have surgery, and in the months that follow, he will be rehabbing while his teammates play an entire season without him.

He still needs to map out with team physical therapists and trainers where he will be this season — in the past, he noted some rehabbing players split time between Minneapolis and Fort Myers — but being around the team would provide both value for the team and the pitcher.

For López, still being around his teammates, he believes, will help him push through a grueling rehab process that will consume the next year of his life. For his teammates, there’s a lot to be gained from having such a knowledgeable, diligent veteran still around in the clubhouse, even if he can’t be contributing on the field.

“He’s the first one here every morning, and (teammates) can go over and sit and talk to him and lean on him. That’s important,” manager Derek Shelton said. “There’s no better guy in that clubhouse. So, to have a person of that quality in there, not just the pitcher but the human being, I think it’s important for our group.”

While López still hopes to impact this year’s Twins’ team in any way he can, he said he plans to use this year to grow mentally. López had Tommy John surgery in 2013 as a teenager while he was still in the minor leagues and he still thinks of his season rehabbing — 2014 — as one of the most influential of his career.

“I’m going to try to evolve in many, many areas,” he said. “It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be challenging. Getting the game taken away from you, it’s the least fun thing as an athlete, as a baseball player. But there’s going to be opportunities for growth and I’m going to be looking to take advantage of that.”

Briefly

Joe Ryan will take the mound when the Twins begin Grapefruit League play on Saturday. The game against the Boston Red Sox, which starts at 12:05 p.m. CT, will be broadcast on Twins.TV. The game will also be available on MLB Network. … Most of the Twins’ starters are expected to play, including Byron Buxton. Buxton is likely to play a little bit more early on in camp than usual as he prepares to participate in the World Baseball Classic. Shelton said the duo sat down early in camp to outline what his schedule should look like. Shelton also leaned on Justin Morneau, who played in four different WBCs for Canada, for advice.

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