Opportunity makes thieves: An employee in a United Parcel Service (UPS) warehouse is said to have stolen hundreds of Apple products within six months, which were then sorted into packages and forwarded. The case took place in Winnipeg, Canada, and the damage amounted to around 1.3 million Canadian dollars, which corresponds to around 890,000 euros at the current exchange rate.
Advertisement
Sold via Kijiji
According to a report by the Canadian TV channel Global, 30-year-old Orville Martirez B. stole a total of 866 individual Apple products. His job as a “local sorting supervisor” was to monitor the distribution of individual packages so that they could be delivered. UPS terminated the man in January. According to court documents, the offenses occurred between July 2023 and January 2024.
B. sold the products via the Kijiji marketplace (in Germany: eBay Kleinanzeigen) and accepted both cash and electronic transfers there. Between September and January alone, B. paid 232,000 Canadian dollars (just over 158,000 euros) in cash into his bank accounts. He was arrested on January 22nd and was initially charged with theft (over 5,000 Canadian dollars and under 5,000 Canadian dollars), possession of stolen property and possession of the proceeds of crime.
120 iPhones stolen in one shift
B. is said to have used the proceeds from the thefts to buy a house in Winnipeg and also paid off the loan for a white Audi. During a search, cash, an Apple notebook and expensive jewelry – which also came from a theft in the UPS warehouse – were seized. B. admitted his actions to the police. The authorities have applied to confiscate his belongings – including accounts, cash, car and house.
The theft only became known after an investigation that UPS launched in December. The parcel service provider had noticed that a particularly large number of Apple products were missing from the warehouse. After security cameras were installed, B. was finally caught – he stole the products from a pallet that was supposed to be forwarded to Ontario. According to the indictment, he allegedly stole more than 120 individual iPhones in a single shift in January.
(bsc)