Background: Target security camera footage of Marlena Velez allegedly using fake barcodes (Cape Coral Police Department). Inset: Marlena Velez (Lee County Sheriff’s Office).
A Florida woman who was arrested for allegedly stealing hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise from Target and posting her haul on social media was taken into custody for a second time — for allegedly stealing from the same Target store.
Marlena Velez, 22, is a social media influencer who shares her shopping trips on TikTok and Instagram, but the posts she creates for her 300,000 followers gave Coral County police the evidence they needed to arrest her for a second time for allegedly using fake barcodes to purchase items at lower prices.
Velez was first arrested on Nov. 20 after Target employees alerted officers to a video showing her allegedly stealing from the self-checkout register on Oct. 30. Velez was charged with one count of petit theft for allegedly stealing approximately $500 worth of merchandise. She posted bond and was released a few hours later.
On Nov. 30, the Target store’s loss prevention staff recognized Velez and alerted police to the “repeat female suspect” who had allegedly stolen from the store a second time on Nov. 20 — the same day she was arrested for the first Oct. 30 incident.
Upon review of the security cameras taken during Velez’s Nov. 20 shopping trip, it was determined that she was once again allegedly using fake barcodes to scan her items and in some cases, not scanning items at all and allegedly placing them in her bag without paying for them. Officers also recognized Velez from her previous arrest and matched the wallpaper image on her phone, noting that “[t]he picture was the same one that was posted on Marlena Velez’s Instagram account with her and her family and is the same wallpaper picture from the previous case.”
Velez was later arrested — again.
More from Law & Crime: ‘Everything was documented’: Florida woman allegedly steals from Target self-checkout using fake barcodes and then posts about the haul on TikTok
The Coral County Police Department released video of Target security cameras that apparently caught Velez while she was at the self-checkout register. In the statement posted on their site, police said, “Sixteen items of miscellaneous household goods and clothing were stolen. The total loss of the stolen items is valued at $225.00.”
Officers charged Velez with one count of petit theft, a misdemeanor, in connection with her Nov. 30 arrest.
