BATON ROUGE — East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office detectives arrested a FedEx driver after multiple packages worth around $32,000 were stolen. Other packages were also stolen over recent months, according to officials.
According to EBRSO, detectives in the larceny division were contacted by a Walmart Global Investigator, who reported that multiple packages scheduled to ship to Walmart were stolen. Per court records, the investigator told detectives that over the past three months, Walmart had noticed around $57,000 worth of electronics had come up missing during shipment and never arrived at the intended store.
The investigator also told detectives that packages scheduled to arrive at the Gonzales Walmart would be picked up and loaded on a truck at the FedEx Baton Rouge location. However, once the items were enroute, they were not delivered to the store.
According to officials, that’s when the Walmart investigators put tracking devices inside other packages scheduled to arrive at the store, which allowed the investigators to track the items to an apartment in the 6000 block of Jones Creek Road.
The packages with the trackers contained over $5,000 worth of electronics, including airpods, airtags, Beats headphones, and more. The Walmart investigator told detectives that the FedEx couriers know what’s inside of the packages because of lithium battery stickers and labels.
Trackers were then placed in a second set of packages, which also ended up at the Jones Creek apartment instead of the Gonzales Walmart, according to the document.
The FedEx driver was identified as Draterrius McCollough. EBRSO detectives obtained a search warrant for his apartment, where deputies say approximately $32,000 worth of stolen merchandise was recovered.
McCollough was arrested and booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on one count of theft. No bond has been set at this time.
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