$depot =~ s/[^A-Za-z0-9 ]/;

And this statement looks very wonky. Should it be
    $depot =~ s/[^A-Za-z0-9 ]//g;
instead? (And might
    $depot =~ tr/A-Za-z0-9 //cd;
be a better choice?)

See s/// and tr/// in perlop.