He spent $300K at Home Depot stores in 7 states — with stolen credit cards, feds say

Hayley Fowler
·2 min read

A 36-year-old California man racked up $300,000 in fraudulent purchases at Home Depot stores in seven states using other people’s credit cards, according to federal prosecutors.

Jonathan Orpilla Sinlao, of San Diego, was indicted Friday, Nov. 12, on access device fraud charges in the Eastern District of Louisiana, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Sinlao has been arrested, and his defense attorney’s information wasn’t listed in federal court filings as of Tuesday.

Sinlao could not be reached by McClatchy News for comment. A representative for The Home Depot did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to a redacted indictment, Sinlao’s alleged scheme spanned at least five months in 2019. During that time, he is accused of frequenting Home Depot stores in Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, New York and Oklahoma and using Home Depot credit card numbers stolen from other customers.

Customers who open new credit cards with Home Depot are given temporary paper documents with bar codes to use while they wait for the actual cards to ship, the indictment states.

Prosecutors said Sinlao used those temporary slips with other individuals’ card numbers and his own name to buy thousands of dollars worth of merchandise in a single trip, often giving the cashier his own driver’s license to complete the purchase.

The items he bought included gift cards, products from the home security company Ring, Google Nest and other Google Home products as well as power tools, prosecutors said.

On one occasion in April 2019, the government said, Sinlao used a stolen credit card number to pay for $4,676 worth of merchandise, including a $2,000 Home Depot gift card. He then turned around and sold the gift card to a pawn shop in Metairie, Louisiana, for $1,000.

The fraudulent purchases continued until July 2019, prosecutors said.

Sinlao was indicted on one count of conspiring to commit access device fraud, which carries a maximum prison sentence of seven and a half years and fines of $250,000. He was also charged with seven counts of access device fraud, which have a maximum sentence of 15 years per count.

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