A man has been charged after allegedly stealing almost 2,000 key fobs from new vehicles while he was working at a rail yard.
Starting in December 2017, various Ford, FCA, and GM vehicles sent out across the country via trains out of New Boston, Michigan, started to arrive at dealerships with just one of their two key fobs. Authorities began looking into the matter when a subsidiary of CSX Transportation started to receive complaints from the automakers about missing key fobs.
According to an affidavit from a postal inspector filed with the criminal complaint, 41-year-old Jason Gibbs who worked as a contractor of CSX, Auto Warehousing Co, was stealing the key fobs and selling them on eBay. He made a reported $60,570 in the process, the Detroit Free Press reports.
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The affidavit explains that the vehicles would arrive at the rail yard unlocked and usually with the two keys zip-tied together. As part of his job, Gibbs would line up the vehicles by driving them into assigned parking rows before they were driven onto the trains by assigned and trained Auto Warehousing Company porters.
As the investigation ramped up, Ford’s Global Brand Production Group purchased three key fobs from an eBay account by the name of “i_live_12volts.” These keys were linked to F-150 models transported out of the New Boston rail yard and arrived with a return address to a vacant home that was last registered to Gibbs. The eBay account was registered to a Kerry Reyna, a Facebook friend of Gibbs and the money sent to a PayPal account named scarpone21, the name username as Gibbs’ Instagram profile. Additionally, it was discovered the postage for the packages that contained the F-150 fobs was paid for with a debit card in Gibbs’ name.
Before long, authorities searched his home and interviewed him. They allege that he sold 1,914 key fobs between December 15, 2017 and May 16, 2018. Most of the key fobs were bought by a single buyer in California who went on to sell then on eBay for prices ranging between $69 and $160.
Gibbs has been charged in federal court in Detroit with theft of goods from interstate shipments.