The manager of Bed, Bath & Beyond has been arrested after a corporate investigation revealed she and her husband had taken merchandise from the store and resold it on eBay.
The investigation was initiated when Bed, Bath & Beyond’s cyber security and investigative unit noticed eBay sales that were suspicious in that items were being sold from its product line. The eBay account from which the items were being sold was linked to the manager of the store at Village Crossroads shopping center, 33-year-old Jamie Lynn Deske of Lady Lake. A subsequent undercover purchase showed that the merchandise associated with Deske’s eBay account matched the serial number of a product from the local Bed, Bath & Beyond store.
On Feb. 3, a corporate representative of Bed, Bath & Beyond confronted Deske at work and she admitted taking more than $11,000 in merchandise from the store between January 2014 and January 2016, according to a Lady Lake Police Department report. Items taken included iRobot Roomba vacuums, a No No hair removal device, fit bit chargers, a makeup mirror and a sleep machine. The smaller items were taken from the store in Deske’s bag, but she also told the eBay representative that she had her husband, 49-year-old Steven Arthur Deske, retrieve items she had put at the rear entrance of the store. Those items were placed in trash bags or in the bottom of a garbage can and she would call her husband for retrieval, the arrest report indicated.
The eBay representative’s findings were turned over to Lady Lake police detectives who determined that there was probable cause to arrest the couple.
They were booked Wednesday morning at the Lake County Jail on felony charges of grand theft. They were released after posting $2,000 bond each.
