Two Texas men who authorities say stole $18,500 in graphing calculators from eight east-metro Target stores last year are among the first to be sentenced under Minnesota’s organized retail theft law, which hit the books in August 2023. Antonio Griffin Jr. and Zachary Charles Fininen, both of Dalla s, were arrested after leaving a Woodbury Target with around $5,500 worth of the pricey mathematical devices on Feb. 21, 2024. A Target investigator tied them to a Dallas-based group of roving thieves responsible for $250,000 worth of stolen or recovered calculators, the Washington County District Court charges say. The duo pleaded guilty to the felony charge of organized retail theft while employed by or associated with a retail theft enterprise. After reaching plea deals with county prosecutors, Griffin was sentenced to three years of supervised probation in January, while Fininen received the same probationary term on Monday. In lieu of jail time, they were also ordered to complete community service while on probation in their home state. Zachary Charles Fininen and Antonio Griffin Jr. (Courtesy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office) State legislators passed the law after some high-profile local cases of organized retail crime, such as grab-and-run thefts from Best Buy stores in Maplewood, Burnsville and Blaine on Black Friday in 2021. The law, which focuses on people stealing items to resell on the black market, does increase the maximum penalty compared to other theft — up to 15 years in prison — but it depends on the value of the items stolen and whether a person has past convictions. According to Minnesota court data, prosecutors have filed 31 charges statewide — four in 2023, 22 last year and five this year as of Monday. All but three of the charges were filed in the metro area. Griffin, 31, and Fininen, 24, are among four people who have been convicted so far under the law. Dakota County was the first to gain a conviction, which happened last year. The other conviction was in Hennepin County this January. The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office filed its first case under the law in November, charging a Connecticut couple suspected of stealing at least $24,000 in merchandise from the Lululemon store at Rosedale Center. The charges allege Akwele Nickeisha Lawes-Richards, 45, and Jadion Anthony Richards, 44, were part of a group that stole more than $1 million in merchandise from Lululemon stores across several states. A spokesman for the Minnesota Organized Retail Crime Association said Monday that although they are seeing the application of the law applied correctly, the penalties are “not necessarily aligned” with the severity of the crime because it is still seen as victimless. Several stores hit in one day According to the criminal complaints against Fininen and Griffin: Woodbury police were called to the Target at 449 Commerce Drive after a loss prevention employee reported that two men were taking calculators from a rack and stashing them in an empty cooler. They left the store without paying. Officers arrived and saw Fininen and Griffin pushing a shopping cart with a cooler inside. As officers tried to stop them, they ditched the cart and ran through the parking lot. An off-duty State Patrol trooper caught Fininen, while Woodbury officers captured Griffin at a nearby Sam’s Club. Officers learned the men arrived at the Target in a black Nissan SUV, which was no longer in the parking lot. From surveillance video, officers discovered the SUV was a rental from the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. The charges say officers then learned that Fininen and Griffin had committed calculator thefts earlier in the day at several other east-metro Targets, including at the other Woodbury store on Valley Creek Road, where video showed they made off with $1,930 worth of the items by concealing them under a towel placed in a shopping cart. Officers gathered video from six other Targets that showed the pair stealing calculators at the Eagan store (totaling $1,565), both Apple Valley locations ($2,176 and $1,392) and stores in Burnsville ($2,027), Lakeville ($1,253) and West St. Paul ($2,614). Target’s website shows graphing calculators selling between $55 and $210 depending on the brand and model. Costly trend Related Articles Crime & Public Safety | Prosecutors say Minnesota man accused of hiding stolen ruby slippers from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is dead Crime & Public Safety | Former Texas megachurch pastor accused of child sex abuse surrenders in Oklahoma Crime & Public Safety | One of the FBI’s original 10 Most Wanted Fugitives was caught in St. Paul — by a bunch of kids Crime & Public Safety | ‘How to go on,’ husband laments at sentencing of Mounds View drunk driver who killed wife and unborn child Crime & Public Safety | Teens charged with entering high school in St. Paul, assaulting student Target Corp. said in a quarterly update in May 2023 that theft is cutting into its bottom line and it expected related losses would be $500 million more than in 2022, when losses from theft were estimated to be anywhere from $700 million to $800 million. Five months later, the Minneapolis-based national retailer closed nine stores in four states, saying in a statement that theft and organized retail crime “are threatening the safety of our team and guests, and contributing to unsustainable business performance.” One store was in Harlem, N.Y., two were in Seattle, Wash., three in the San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., markets and three were in Portland, Ore. The retailer also threw its support at the June 2023 passage of the Inform Consumers Act, which gives marketplaces like Amazon and eBay a larger role in combating the second-hand sale of stolen goods. ...read more read less