Two Texas men swiped nearly $18,500 in graphing calculators from eight east-metro Target stores on one day last month as part of an organized theft ring out of the Dallas area, charges say.
Zachary Charles Fininen, 23, and Antonio Griffin Jr., 30, both of Dallas, were arrested Feb. 21 shortly after waltzing out of a Woodbury Target with a slew of the expensive mathematical devices valued at around $5,500, according to criminal complaints filed in Washington County District Court charging them with felony organized retail theft while employed by or associated with a retail theft enterprise.
Zachary Charles Fininen and Antonio Griffin Jr. (Courtesy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office)
Both men have made first court appearances and were released from the Washington County jail after posting $30,000 bond. Fininen’s next court hearing is March 14, while Griffin is due back in front of a judge April 10.
The charges say a Target investigator has tied the duo to a Dallas gang of thieves responsible for $250,000 worth of stolen or recovered calculators. The investigation is ongoing.
Target’s website shows graphing calculators selling for as little as $55 and up to $1,600 depending on the brand and model.
Caught on video
According to the criminal complaints:
Woodbury police were called to the Target at 449 Commerce Drive after a loss prevention employee reported that two men were taking calculators from a rack and stashing them in an empty cooler. They left the store without paying.
Officers arrived and saw Fininen and Griffin pushing a shopping cart with a cooler inside. As officers tried to stop them, they ditched the cart and ran through the parking lot. An off-duty State Patrol trooper caught Fininen, while Woodbury officers captured Griffin at a nearby Sam’s Club.
Officers learned that Fininen and Griffin arrived at the Target in a black Nissan SUV, which was no longer in the parking lot. From surveillance video, officers discovered the SUV was a rental from the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.
Officers then learned that Fininen and Griffin had committed calculator thefts earlier in the day at several other east-metro Targets, including at the other Woodbury store on Valley Creek Road, where video showed they made off with $1,930 worth of the items by concealing them under a towel placed in a shopping cart.
Officers gathered video from six other Targets that showed the pair stealing calculators at the Eagan store (totaling $1,565), both Apple Valley locations ($2,176 and $1,392) and stores in Burnsville ($2,027), Lakeville ($1,253) and West St. Paul ($2,614).
Costly trend
Last May, in a quarterly update, Target Corp. said theft is cutting into its bottom line and that it expected related losses could be $500 million more than in 2022, when losses from theft were estimated to be anywhere from $700 million to $800 million.
Five months later, the Minneapolis-based national retailer closed nine stores in four states, saying in a statement that theft and organized retail crime “are threatening the safety of our team and guests, and contributing to unsustainable business performance.” One store was in Harlem, N.Y., two were in Seattle, Wash., three in the San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., markets and three were in Portland, Ore.
The retailer said the decision followed strategies that aimed at preventing and stopping theft and organized retail crime in stores, including more security team members, security guards and theft-deterrent tools.
The retailer also threw its support at the June passage of the Inform Consumers Act, which gives marketplaces like Amazon and eBay a larger role in combating the second-hand sale of stolen goods.
Thefts of graphing calculators have been reported across the U.S. in recent months, according to police and media reports.
In late January, a Wisconsin man was arrested and charged with stealing over $90,000 worth of calculators from Target stores across Indiana and several other states, the Indianapolis Star reported. He was held on local charges, but had warrants for his arrest in eight states, including Minnesota, Illinois and Ohio, the newspaper reported.
The heists aren’t isolated to retail stores. Last March, a group of teens hit up several high schools in the Bronx, N.Y., and made off with a stockpile of calculators worth more than $40,000, the New York Post reported.
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