On April 16, 2025 at approximately 3:50 p.m., Winter Haven Police responded to a call involving fraudulent refunds at NAPA Auto Parts, located at 1640 3rd St SW in Winter Haven.
Officers made contact with the loss prevention (LP) member of the store who advised of being notified by another employee that 39 year-old Tiffany Johnson (DOB 12-4-85, 1112 Gilmore Ave., Lakeland FL) had been committing credit card fraud. (None of the transactions involved customer cards.)
The LP employee started an investigation on April 15, 2025 right after being notified of the accusations. A 12-hour review of transactions uncovered that, through video obtained of transactions, Johnson would look up invoices in the store computer system and utilized those transactions to enter in a refund. Johnson was then seen tapping her own card on the card reader to have the refund go back to her account. The transactions dated back to August 2024, when a new management company took over.
Johnson utilized four different cards to obtain the refunds, each card number linking back to Johnson by her employee account. The four cards were refunded in 54 transactions: $7,173.10, $3,067.90, $529.78 and $2,998.43 to total $13,769.21.
Upon being interviewed, Johnson told officers that she learned of the process by another NAPA employee who works out of state. Johnson completed the transactions approximately every other week for several months and she confirmed the money went back to her only.
Johnson was taken into custody and booked into the Polk County Jail for one count of Grand Theft (F3) and one count of Obtaining Property by Fraud (F3).
