Miami-Dade Home Depot manager arrested in alleged $4 million markdown fraud scheme

Mauricio Jimenez, a 48-year-old Hialeah resident who worked as a Home Depot store manager, was arrested Tuesday and accused of turning store-level markdown authority into a years-long fraud scheme that cost the company about $4.3 million.

Authorities said Jimenez faces charges of organized fraud of $50,000 or more and first-degree grand theft exceeding $100,000. The alleged scheme ran from December 2023 through April 2026 and centered on unauthorized markdowns at two South Florida stores, 7899 W. Flagler St. in west Miami-Dade and 13895 W. Okeechobee Road in Hialeah Gardens.

Investigators tied more than 4,500 separate orders to the activity. Those transactions generated about $55 million in gross sales, but after roughly $24 million in markdowns, Home Depot recorded the net loss of about $4.3 million on the orders. Authorities said the discounting pattern was concentrated among a small group of accounts and was structured to avoid internal detection thresholds.

The case points to a core control issue for any big-box retailer: when a manager can approve pricing exceptions, repeated markdowns can look like ordinary customer service until the volume gets large enough to break through. Authorities said Jimenez allegedly used his pricing authority beyond permissible limits, especially on bulk merchandise sold to repeat customers, and also used or was linked to multiple business entities, shell companies or aliases to place orders and receive discounted merchandise.

Reporting from local TV stations said investigators first spotted suspicious activity at the Hialeah Gardens store and later saw the pattern intensify at the west Miami-Dade location where Jimenez was working when he was arrested. Local 10 also reported that the activity at the earlier store stopped after Jimenez left, while markdown activity rose sharply at the newer location. Authorities said Home Depot leadership had warned him to stop selling to seven affiliated businesses, but he allegedly continued anyway.

The company’s fraud losses were small next to its scale. Home Depot, founded in 1978, reported fiscal 2025 sales of $164.7 billion and net earnings of $14.2 billion. Even so, the alleged markdown scheme underscores how much damage a single insider can do when routine transactions are not closely monitored. Home Depot’s investor materials say its audit committee oversees compliance and internal audit functions, a reminder that pricing controls are part of the same oversight chain as financial reporting itself.