A Tennessee truck driver has been sentenced in federal court for his role in an extensive cargo theft scheme that prosecutors think included thefts in over a dozen states.
The U.S. Attorney’s office says 59-year-old Michael Lee Sherley, of Memphis, was sentenced in Missouri to four years and six months without parole.
Sherley pleaded guilty last March to stealing a 2000 Wabash trailer valued at around $7,500 containing $73,000 worth of canned corn from a truck stop in May 2013. The corn was being by shipped form Minnesota to a food bank in Arkansas by Bryant Freight.
Sherley worked for Nu World Trucking owned by his uncle, Memphis resident Early Stanley Nunn, from July 2012 until his arrest in May 2013. Nunn also pleaded guilty of stealing an interstate shipment.
To pull off the heist, Shirley and Nunn bob-tailed through truck stops and gas stations looking for unattended trailers loaded with cargo. They would then hook up the trailers and drive them to Chicago and Detroit to be “fenced” or sold, and would also sell the contents inside.
Prosecutors believe they committed thefts in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
Source
KY-3
WGEM
Ozarks First