Detectives say these shoplifters think they’re entitled to steal over $1,000 in groceries every week while calmly walking through self-checkout

A theft investigation at a Publix grocery store began with a simple discovery: shelves were missing high-dollar products, and the losses were not adding up like a normal one-time shoplifting incident.

According to the host of the Deep Dive BodyCam YouTube channel, the end of the case looked tense, emotional, and confusing for one of the women taken into custody, but the beginning looked much calmer. Five weeks earlier, the host said, the same people were allegedly walking through the store with a routine that seemed practiced, quiet, and confident.

The host framed the case as one where the “gap” between the calm store visits and the later arrest became the real story, because investigators said the suspects were not simply grabbing one or two items in a rushed moment. Store employees told detectives they had traced repeated visits, checked receipts against surveillance footage, and found a pattern that allegedly added up to more than $1,300 in stolen groceries and merchandise over several trips.

A Store Manager Starts Looking Back

In the footage, a Publix employee told investigators that the store noticed the losses after a section of high-dollar shampoo and conditioner appeared to have been cleared out.

The employee said the store manager sent a photo around 9 p.m. on October 6 and asked her to look into it. The next morning, she reviewed CCTV and saw two women with three children shopping that night, moving through the store and allegedly taking multiple items from the health and beauty aisle.

From there, the employee said she pulled transaction data, used the credit card information tied to the purchases, and looked back about a month. She identified several dates, including September 15, September 23, September 26, September 27, October 6, and October 7, where the same people appeared to return to the store.

The store employee told Detective Baron, who was identified in the bodycam footage as being with the sheriff’s office, that the suspects often came in different combinations. Sometimes it was two women, and other times it was a man and a woman.

She said one woman always brought in a large black bag that appeared empty when they entered, but looked full by the time they left.

“They only check out through self-checkout,” the Publix employee told the detective, explaining that the bag would grow larger during the visit while only a small number of items were scanned and paid for.

High-Dollar Items And A Repeated Routine

The employee told Detective Baron that the group appeared to target items that could quickly raise the value of the theft, including meat, high-dollar shampoo, toothbrushes, batteries, chargers, and other products from the electronic aisle.

She said some areas of the store did not have a perfect camera angle, which made it harder to capture every item being placed into the bag. But she also said there were enough moments on video to show items going into the cart or into the bag, then not being scanned at checkout.

The host of Deep Dive BodyCam pointed to the behavior of one woman in the store, describing her not as someone nervously watching the cashier, but as someone watching the store floor.

According to the host, the woman appeared to be looking toward aisles, employee paths, and back-of-store doors, almost as if she were reading where employees might walk next. He said that did not look like panic; it looked like rehearsal.

That observation is not hard to understand. Most people who accidentally miss an item at self-checkout act confused or embarrassed when it is pointed out, but the pattern described by the store suggested something more organized: repeated visits, the same store, the same checkout method, and the same kind of bag.

The detective also explained the legal importance of building the full picture. In Florida, he said, theft of more than $750 can be treated as grand theft, but multiple thefts from the same store within a 90-day period can also be combined if the total exceeds that amount.

That detail mattered because the store’s running total had reached about $1,400 at that point, based on what employees said they could verify.

Self-Checkout Becomes Part Of The Case

The Publix employee told the detective that the suspects always used self-checkout, and Detective Baron noted that this made the conduct easier to prove when compared with the receipt.

The detective explained that it helped investigators show what the shoppers actually paid for and what they allegedly did not. He said that if someone paid $150 and failed to scan $10 in items, the defense might argue it was a mistake, but if someone paid for a small number of groceries while walking out with a much larger unpaid load, that told a different story.

The employee agreed, saying the store could see them paying for only a handful of items while other products visible earlier in the trip were never scanned.

This is where modern retail theft investigations become less about the moment someone leaves the door and more about the full paper trail. Surveillance video, receipts, license plate information, and repeated transaction records can turn what looks like ordinary shopping footage into a timeline.

The store also provided images of a light-colored Dodge truck with blacked-out features, and the license plate was written down for investigators. The detective said the tag came back to a white Dodge registered to an older man from Miami, which only added another layer to the investigation.

The Arrest At The Residence

Later in the footage, detectives went to a residence while appearing to use a neighborhood canvass as a way to make contact. Detective Baron first spoke with an older man who said he spoke Spanish and lived there with his daughter and children.

After a woman came outside, the situation changed quickly. Officers moved in, one of them told her to stop, and the woman became frightened and emotional as she was detained.

“Just relax for a second,” one officer told her repeatedly, while another explained through a Spanish-speaking officer that the investigation involved Publix.

The officers identified the woman as Stephanie, though the host later reported that Lisandra Suarez Gallardo, 38, of Port Charlotte, was charged in the case. The footage showed officers trying to determine whether the woman would voluntarily come to the office and provide a statement, with one officer telling her this was her chance to explain what happened.

The scene was far different from the calm surveillance described inside the store. The host noted that people often act one way when they believe no one is watching and another way when they realize investigators have been building a case the whole time.

That is a fair reading of the moment, but it is also important to keep the legal posture clear: the case was still moving through court, and the charges described in the video are allegations unless and until proven.

Three Suspects Identified

Deep Dive BodyCam’s host reported that Lisandra Suarez Gallardo was charged with retail theft of more than $750 in coordination with others, described as a third-degree felony under Florida law.

According to the host, investigators eventually placed the total at approximately $1,385 across six visits to the same Publix between September 15 and October 7.

The host also said Suarez Gallardo was not accused of acting alone. Two codefendants were identified as Ephanie Herrera Horta and Oscar Gonzalez Blanco, with investigators relying on facial recognition and license plate readers to help identify them.

Herrera Horta, the host said, had allegedly been tied to a similar retail theft in Jacksonville three months earlier, involving the same vehicle and the same general method. A warrant had reportedly already been issued in her name before the Charlotte County Publix investigation reached the arrest stage.

According to the host, both women were taken into custody on October 21. Suarez Gallardo was interviewed after Miranda warnings with a Spanish-speaking detective translating, became visibly emotional, and later requested a lawyer and declined to continue speaking. The host said Herrera Horta also declined to speak further.

A Case Built From Routine

What stands out in the Deep Dive BodyCam report is not just the value of the alleged theft, but the ordinary way the conduct was described.

The suspects allegedly walked into a grocery store, moved through the aisles, used self-checkout, paid for some items, and left. On any single visit, it may not have looked dramatic to a casual observer, but store employees said the pattern became clear once they started comparing the video to the receipts.

That is why the case feels less like a chaotic smash-and-grab and more like a retail loss investigation built through patience. The store employee had to identify the missing products, review video, track dates, compare transactions, and hand detectives enough detail to support the case.

The host argued that people who repeat the same method six times at the same store are not necessarily being reckless. In his view, they may simply be confident because they believe no one is watching closely enough.

In this case, someone eventually was. And once the store began matching the camera angles, receipts, dates, and vehicle information, the calm self-checkout routine described in the footage became the foundation of a felony theft investigation.