A suspect got lucky and conned his way into stealing $8,500 worth of copper by asking for it to be loaded onto his truck, the president of a Fort Lauderdale roofing company said.
Rob Kornahrens of Advanced Roofing, at 1950 NW 22nd St., said that around noon on Friday the man arrived in his white Ford F-250 pickup truck, went to the mechanics’ shop and said he was there to pick up some scrap metal. The business doesn’t sell scrap metal, and if the guy who runs the shop was there he would have put an end to it – but he was having lunch with Kornahrens at the time because he was the employee of the quarter, Kornahrens said.
Instead, the man was sent to the back warehouse, where he asked another inexperienced worker where the scrap metal was – and was guided to a Dumpster outside, Kornahrens said.
“Well, the gentleman walked out there and said ‘Hey, I’m going to need a forklift.’ So he said, ‘Well, go talk to the other guy,’” Kornahrens said.
He said one of his managers was making calls to find out who the guy was, but no one knew.
In the meantime, another manager let the situation go on, Kornahrens said.
“The guy in the forklift was loading another truck, so he was annoyed he had to stop, so he just asked the con guy, ‘what am I supposed to load for you?’” Kornahrens said. “So the con guy, thinking on his feet, said load this copper pallet, two copper pallets – $8,500 worth of copper in my truck. So he just goes ahead, not really thinking through the whole thing, and he loads $8,500 worth of copper in this guy’s Ford 250, and (the guy) just drives out of the yard.”
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Fort Lauderdale Police said there was a police report filed, but could not provide any further information on the case on Tuesday.
“We know it’s not an inside job because we just know that the way it happened, it was just a bizarre story where the guy just got lucky coming in in the middle of the day when (what I call) my smart people were at lunch, and they got the wrong people, and no one communicated with each other, and everybody thought the other guy approved it,” Kornahrens said.
He said the situation with his employees has been rectified.
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