Md. Man Sentenced For Scheme To Steal, Sell Chicken Parts To Black Market
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Lamar Tiquon Greene, 39, of Easton, Md., was sentenced Friday to seven months in federal prison for interstate transportation of stolen chicken parts.
Co-defendants Clifton A. Seeney, 58, of Millsboro, DE., and Dondrey Tamount Copper, 43, of Easton, were sentenced October 16 for the same charge.
According to their plea agreements, Seeney was a commercial truck driver who worked for a company that was contracted to move pallets of frozen, processed chicken parts from a company in Maryland.
The company in Maryland owned and operated poultry processing facilities, hatcheries and feed mills around the East Coast. Greene and Copper worked at the company's plant in Cordova, Md.
The chicken processing plant used bar code scanning to track the movement of its product inventory.
From April 2015 to December 9, 2015, Seeney, Greene and Copper exploited the system by stealing pallets of frozen chicken parts and selling them in the New York City area.
Seeney would text Copper information concerning Seeney's truck load assignment. Greene and Copper would scan the bar codes on pallets of cargo that were destined for wholesale customers back into the production inventory, then remove them without further scanning and load the pallets onto a truck driven by Seeney that was already loaded with inventory for legitimate customers.
Seeney would deliver the stolen chicken parts to "black market" customers during the same trips he delivered chicken products to legitimate customers.
The three were caught when on December 9, 2015, another employee at the chicken processing plant alerted his supervisor that pallets of chicken parts had been loaded onto a trailer without properly being scanned out of inventory.
The employee also spoke with Copper and Greene, who provided false accounts about the products on the trailer.
The owner of the trucking company attempted to reach Seeney to tell him to return to the plant, but he ignored the order and continued to New York City, where he delivered the product to legitimate customers.
GPS tracking found that Seeney also traveled to another location where he off-loaded stolen chicken products and received cash in return.
Seeney later posted photos to his social media account, taken while in the cab of the truck, flashing a wad of cash he received from the buyer of the stolen product.
More investigation revealed texts messages between Copper and Seeney referencing the availability of stolen chicken products for delivery to black market customers.
The insurance carrier for the chicken processing company estimated the value of the stolen chicken products at around $248,000.
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