Prince George's County police arrest suspect in 100 retail thefts

Prince George’s County police say a Riverdale man they identify as Carlos Maurice Wilder stole merchandise from stores across the county in a months-long pattern that left retailers with about $50,000 in losses and no recovered goods. Investigators say the 42-year-old is accused of more than 100 thefts since January, making the case one of the clearest examples yet of the organized retail theft problem county leaders have been trying to confront.

Police said Wilder took higher-value items including televisions and Ninja blenders, then moved quickly out of stores before workers could stop him. Investigators said none of the merchandise was recovered because Wilder told them he sold what he stole. At the time of his arrest, police said, he already had nine open warrants tied to theft cases.

The arrest came after a retailer working with the county’s new Organized Retail Theft Task Force spotted Wilder inside a store on Sunday and alerted police. Officers then took him into custody, a sequence that shows how the task force is meant to work: store employees flag repeat offenders, investigators connect the cases, and police move before losses keep piling up. Police have not identified the stores or corridors most affected, but they say the thefts were spread across Prince George’s County.

The case lands in the middle of a broader push by county officials to treat retail theft as both a public-safety issue and an economic drain on local business. The Prince George’s County Council backed Maryland’s Organized Retail Theft Act of 2025, which took effect Oct. 1, 2025, giving prosecutors a way to join related thefts committed under one scheme and pursue cases across county lines. The law also targets repeated thefts from retail merchants over a 90-day period when the total exceeds $1,500.

Police Chief George Nader, appointed by County Executive Aisha Braveboy in 2025, has said the department is focusing on theft as a profession for some offenders rather than a one-off act of desperation. The department says it is Maryland’s fourth-largest law enforcement agency, with more than 1,500 officers and 300 civilians serving nearly 900,000 residents and business owners. In June 2024, then-Chief Malik Aziz said residents were deeply concerned about organized retail theft and ATM thefts, underscoring that the issue has been building for months, not days.

County police also point to a broader public-safety backdrop: in a 2025 progress report, total crime in Prince George’s County fell 16% and violent crime dropped 19%. Even with those declines, the Wilder case suggests retail theft remains a stubborn problem, and police are using the new task force to show that repeat offenders can still be tracked, linked and arrested.