An ex-Walmart employee was convinced that his scheme of stealing hundreds of tech gadgets at the Pennsylvania store he formerly worked at would go unnoticed — well, he was clearly in the wrong, because a judge has since sentenced him to serve 3 years and 10 months behind bars. The ruling against Rusmaldy Jimenez-Hiciano was confirmed in a news release by the Eastern District of Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney’s Office on Tuesday, which includes 3 years of supervised release.
Hiciano was working at the Walmart store back in 2017 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he came up with the plan to put aside a bunch of tech products ranging from iPads, Apple Watches, and Nintendo Switch consoles. Court documents specified that approximately 1,000 Apple iPads were taken from the Walmart distribution, 942 Apple Watches, and 285 Nintendo Switches.
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To make matters worse, despite his firing in May 2018, Hiciano continued coming back to the store to steal more products while staying in contact with a handful of his former colleagues, presumably to find the most suitable time to commit yet another crime. Since Walmart contended it had lost $2 million from the stolen products, a judge said Hiciano would be required to pay $536,000 in restitution and forfeit $461,000.
Hiciano pleaded guilty to four counts of mail fraud, with U.S. Attorney Jacquieline C. Romero telling the court, “Jimenez-Hiciano stole hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of goods from his former employer. Instead of doing the right thing and performing his job honestly, he took advantage of his position and his employer.”
His lawyer, Glennis Close, argued that Hiciano is a hard worker who simply happened to have given into his “worst nature.”
“He had some financial difficulties and issues with his mother was suffering from cancer which caused him to miss working in medical leave,” Close said. “And he made the wrong decision as to what he should do to remedy the problem.”