By admin 
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — A man has been indicted after authorities say he stole over $6,000 worth of power tools from home improvement stores across the Valley.
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Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said Luis Adrian Valle-Martinez stole power tools and hardware from 17 Lowe’s and Home Depot stores in the Phoenix metro area between September 2025 and July 2026.
The county attorney’s office said Valle-Martinez was captured on surveillance video using self-checkout machines to pay for low-cost items, then leaving the stores without paying for higher-cost items, which he would sell along 27th Avenue and Van Buren Street in Phoenix.
According to court records, Valle-Martinez was indicted on 17 felony counts of organized retail theft.
The county attorney has been cracking down on organized retail theft rings in recent years. She told Arizona’s Family that this crime is used to fund other crimes.
“So in my way of thinking, it’s cutting off the head of the snake,” Mitchell said. “It’s cutting off the money that funds other criminal behavior.”
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Mitchell became Maricopa County Attorney in 2022 and launched an organized retail theft task force that same year. Since then, her office has added a dedicated investigator, begun requesting higher bonds in court and lowered the threshold for cases it accepts.
In 2021, law enforcement submitted 536 organized retail theft cases to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. After the task force launched, submissions rose to 900 in 2024, followed by 738 in 2025 and 344 through the end of June this year.
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