A career thief who stole cases of liquor from retail stores across Central Florida is finally going to prison after mostly getting away with it for years.

DELICIA M. HOGAN was sentenced June 2 to 20 years in prison followed by five years’ probation in four Seminole County theft cases. Assistant State Attorney Anna Valentini made the case that Hogan should be sentenced as a habitual felony offender, and Circuit Judge Michael Rudisill agreed.

A witness in one of those cases said Hogan, 30, was associated with 79 retail “events” at Central Florida Walmart stores alone, costing the company more than $57,700 by the time of her arrest in May 2024.

“She’s the definition of a career criminal,” Valentini said. “She just doesn’t stop.  We all pay for that, one way or another.”

Hogan’s undoing was her robbery of a Publix liquor store in Longwood in March 2024. Hogan made her way into an employee-only stockroom, grabbed a case of Patron tequila, and shoved a 74-year-old store clerk to the ground as she bolted for a rear emergency-exit door, breaking the worker’s wrist. Hogan escaped with the $487 worth of tequila in a red Hyundai Sonata getaway car driven by a friend – as she had recently done in thefts in Sanford and Casselberry, investigators said.

A Seminole County Sheriff’s Office detective showed video from the Publix security system to a Walmart loss-prevention officer, who instantly identified Hogan from her “habitual thefts at multiple Walmart stores.”  The State Attorney’s Office for Seminole County charged Hogan with burglary of a structure with a battery – a first-degree felony punishable by up to life in prison – plus aggravated battery of a person 65 or older, and felony petit theft.

Hogan, of Orlando, had seven prior convictions for theft in Seminole, Hillsborough, Sumter and Polk counties. She served short stints in county jail, but never prison. At the time of the Publix liquor store burglary, Hogan was serving probation for the Polk County theft in which she and four other suspects stole electronics from a Walmart before leading Lake Wales Police officers on a high-speed chase.

Hogan’s thefts hurt more than the stores’ finances. In a victim-impact statement submitted to the court, the injured Publix clerk wrote that she was in a cast for a month, spent 10 months in physical therapy, and suffered pain for a year.

“Quite a hardship,” the victim wrote, calling for Hogan to receive a long prison sentence. “I know she was a repeat offender, and I’m sure she hasn’t learned her lesson.”