Ohio State Police have issued an arrest warrant for a woman who they say swindled $80 from cashiers at the new Ohio Union.
Officers say that Rhonda L. Talley, 44, tricked two cashiers into giving her more money than she gave them twice in the last month.
“She was asking for different change in different manners using different bills,” said Officer Adam Tabor, who works at the police substation at the Union.
The scheme is known as “short-changing” and is considered theft, police said.
The first theft was reported March 31, only two days after the grand opening of the Union. Surveillance footage shows a woman buying a bag of chips and walking away $20 richer.
“We had a report from the Union Market that someone had confused one of their cashiers with multiple requests for change using different bills while they were paying for a bag of chips,” Tabor said.
A week later, the same woman did it again, but that time she bought an orange and conned $60 from the cashier.
Surveillance footage showed that both times the woman went to the Union, there was a man standing nearby who appeared to be in on the scheme, Tabor said, but police didn’t know the identity of either of the suspects.
While police waited to see if the short-changer would return, a detective at OSU Police submitted the case to a law enforcement information network, asking if other central Ohio police had seen similar schemes.
An officer in Gahanna replied that a short-changing duo had stolen $100 from a gas station and pizza shop but hadn’t been caught. A Crime Stoppers report about those thefts said the con artists had cheated businesses out of hundreds of dollars.
Police had identified the two suspects as Talley and Gary L. Wilkes, 58, both listed as residents of the Near East Side, when a staff member at the Union reported that he saw Wilkes leaving the building last Monday.
Tabor arrested Wilkes outside Moritz College of Law when Wilkes allegedly gave a false name and social security number.
“He explained to me that he was indeed present for the thefts and he identified the female as who we knew she was,” Tabor said.
Once Wilkes corroborated that Talley was the thief, police issued a warrant for both thefts. Deputy Chief Richard Morman said that Wilkes will not be charged for the short-change thefts.
Detectives aren’t sure where Talley lives, Tabor said, but they are following leads and will look for her until they make the arrest.
Talley is described as a black female weighing about 150 pounds with short, black hair.
Morman said police couldn’t release the surveillance footage of the thefts because it could be used as evidence.
