Florida police charge men with stealing cardboard www.privateofficer.com
Now, Leonardo Diaz, 39, of Homestead, is charged with grand theft between $200 and $1,000.
According to a Lee County Sheriff’s Office report:
On Thursday the loss prevention officer for Kmart, 3302 Bonita Beach Road, told deputies another store employee saw Diaz, who is a truck driver for Iberia Foods, load a pallet of cardboard, valued at $300 onto his truck. She confronted him and Diaz put the pallet back. The cardboard is for recycling.
After completing the deliver for K mart, he put the cardboard pallet back on his truck and drove away.
The loss prevention officer gave deputies some security footage showing the incident.
Diaz was found at Bonita Beach and Iowa Roads. The two Kmart employees identified him as the culprit and he was arrested.
In other arrests, a Collier County deputy noticed a couple of suspicious men last week at a local grocer and now those men are being investigated by Lee County deputies to see if they were involved with three thefts of bundled cardboard from Bonita Springs stores.
Aguero Eduardo Fuentes, 41, and Danilo O. Ramirez Frias, 22, both of Miami, were charged with grand theft and burglary by Collier deputies.
Just before 4 a.m. on April 7 a Collier deputy saw a truck backed into the loading docks at Publix, 15265 Collier Blvd., Naples, and two men were attempting to load a pallet of cardboard onto the truck, according to a Collier County Sheriff’s Office report. He questioned them and found an additional pallet of cardboard in their truck. They were arrested.
The deputy wrote he knows the cardboard is valuable when it is recycled.
On Monday, employees of Publix, 24600 U.S. 41 South, and K mart, 3302 Bonita Beach Road, both in Bonita Springs, said an investigator from Collier County notified them that deputies recovered bundles of cardboard which had their store stickers on them, according to a Lee County Sheriff’s Office report.
Friday afternoon an employee for Home Depot, 11941 Bonita Beach Road, notified Lee deputies and said he, too, was notified of bundles with Home Depot stickers on them.
The manager of the Naples store said Publix does all of its recycling in-house and did not hire the suspects to remove the bundled cardboard.
The men had not been charged as of Tuesday in connection with the Lee County incidents.
