Little Debbie delivery truck driver charged with $17,000 fraud scheme for selling his cargo at flea markets

All totaled, authorities say, the driver netted more than $17,000 before he was caught.

James Powell, a former Stewart Snacks LLC delivery driver, was taken into custody in West Virginia in late July and extradited to Pennsylvania. He faces more than a dozen charges of forgery, theft by deception, theft by unlawful taking, deceptive or fraudulent business practices and tampering with records or identification. As of publication time, Powell has not entered a plea in this case, and none of the charges have been proven in court.

Selling like hot cakes

As an employee of Ohio-based Stewart Snacks, Powell would order, transport, deliver, stock and service Little Debbie products throughout the Washington County area, which is located southwest of Pittsburgh, right along the West Virginia state line. Invoices would be submitted to stores, and drivers were paid based on how many snacks they sold in their assigned territory.

Authorities say Powell submitted fraudulent invoices with forged signatures from stores including Walmart and Shop ‘n Save totaling more than $13,000 between July and September of last year, but he instead allegedly sold the snack cakes from his delivery vehicle at flea markets. Beyond the money Powell made from the sale of those confections, he also earned more than $3,700 in commissions, say police.

Stewart Snacks has since reimbursed the companies for the allegedly fraudulent invoices. The company is now attempting to get the money back from Powell.

Food and beverage crimes

There have been several incidents in the past few months involving theft of food and beverage on a large scale. Most notable was an occurrence in March in Indiana, where Randall Baker allegedly stole a Bud Light beer truck that was outside of a liquor store, while the driver was unloading it. He then led police on a “Smokey & the Bandit”-style pursuit, ultimately striking a deputy’s patrol vehicle, which resulted in the semi leaving the roadway and coming to rest in a field.

The deputy whose car was struck was not injured. “It didn’t really hit me about the car being damaged until … he was in custody,” he told a local TV station. “Then I was, like, ‘oh no. How am I getting home?’”

Reports say Baker is planning to plead guilty of charges at a hearing scheduled for the end of August.

Meanwhile, in May, a California couple were sentenced to 10 months in federal prison for their part in coordinating shipments of 124,390 pounds of stolen baby formula from a storage unit in Vancouver. That formula was worth more than $2.4 million.