A man and woman worked a card-decline distraction scheme to steal merchandise from a Murdoch's in Littleton and a Walgreens in Highlands Ranch, according to investigators, who are now asking the public to help identify the pair. The Douglas County Sheriff's Office says the male suspect's card was declined at checkout, prompting him to stall the cashier while his female accomplice quietly carried the goods out to a waiting car.
According to a Douglas County Sheriff's Office Facebook post titled “Scanned, bagged, and stolen. Help us ID this duo,” the pair selected merchandise and brought it to the cashier together before splitting up. The male suspect stayed behind at the register and told the cashier he needed to get another card from the female suspect, buying time as she carried the merchandise out to the car. Deputies say the man never returned to pay, and the pair drove off together with the stolen goods.
Investigators describe the male suspect as Hispanic, about 5 feet 9 inches tall, with a thin build. He was wearing a hat, a black polo shirt, and jeans. The female suspect is also described as Hispanic, roughly 5 feet 7 inches tall, with a medium build and medium-length brown hair. Deputies say the suspects fled in a red four-door sedan that may be a Volkswagen Jetta, though that identification has not been confirmed.
A Familiar Pattern Along the C-470 Corridor
This is not the first time this summer that Douglas County deputies have turned to the public for help chasing down retail theft suspects moving between commercial hubs. Earlier in August, deputies arrested two people who fled a Highlands Ranch Target in a truck towing a camper trailer, crashing on C-470 before trying to run on foot — an incident that ended in charges including vehicular eluding, obstructing an officer, and theft, as previously reported by Hoodline. Around the same time, the sheriff's office sought help identifying a suspect accused of hitting two King Soopers stores in Highlands Ranch and Castle Pines across three separate visits between May and June, allegedly making off with hundreds of dollars in groceries.
County records show that roughly 75% of crimes committed in Douglas County involve suspects who don't actually live there, a pattern officials attribute in part to easy regional access via transport arteries like C-470 and U.S. 85 connecting Littleton, Highlands Ranch, and Lone Tree. That mobility helps explain why a single scheme can touch stores in two different towns within the same investigation.
Statewide Shoplifting Numbers Climbing
The Murdoch's and Walgreens case lands amid a broader statewide surge in retail theft. Colorado law enforcement recorded 27,094 shoplifting incidents in 2024, a 22.4% jump from the year before and the highest annual total in a decade, according to a Common Sense Institute report cited by the Denver Gazette. Researchers with that report estimate that up to 89% of retail thefts nationally go unreported, meaning the true number of incidents in Colorado could have topped 240,000 that year.
Douglas County itself logged 12,459 reported shoplifting incidents between 2014 and 2024, placing it among the state's top ten counties for retail theft over that decade, per the same Common Sense Institute data. That's still well below neighboring Adams County's 52,333 incidents and Jefferson County's 34,241 over the same period, but it underscores why local officials have been ramping up enforcement and reporting requirements.
New County Ordinance and Potential Charges
In February, the Board of Douglas County Commissioners unanimously adopted a retail theft ordinance requiring commercial businesses in unincorporated parts of the county to report suspected shoplifting to law enforcement within 96 hours of discovering it, according to Douglas County Government. The measure was designed to help deputies track theft patterns quickly and discourage store policies that discourage employees from reporting incidents.
Legally, the scheme's two-store structure could work against the suspects if they're identified and charged. Under Colorado Revised Statute § 18-4-401(2)(b), prosecutors can aggregate the value of merchandise stolen across multiple locations into a single, higher-tier charge when the thefts are part of one ongoing scheme. Colorado law sets a $300 threshold for petty theft, punishable by up to 10 days in jail, while theft of $2,000 or more becomes a felony — one of the higher felony thresholds in the country. Separately, under Colorado Revised Statute § 13-21-107.5, Murdoch's and Walgreens could also pursue automatic civil penalties of $100 to $250 plus actual damages directly from the suspects, independent of any criminal case.
How to Help
The Douglas County Sheriff's Office is asking anyone with information to contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers, an independent nonprofit that offers anonymous tipsters cash rewards of up to $2,000 for information leading to an arrest in metro-area cases. Tipsters can reach Crime Stoppers at 720-913-STOP (7867) and reference case number 2026-00054436; the organization issues unique identification codes so tipsters can collect a reward without revealing their identity. As of now, deputies have not said whether the suspects have been tied to similar distraction thefts in neighboring counties, and no additional leads on the red sedan have been made public.
