FedEx driver arrested for UCFD credit card theft

Darius Dijon Harris, 29, of Winder, has been charged with one felony count of financial transaction card theft, with additional charges likely to be forthcoming. At the time of his arrest, Harris also had an arrest warrant for fraud issued by Watkinsville-area law enforcement.

The theft occurred on Friday, March 28, after Harris, an independent contractor with FedEx, showed up in his work truck with a package delivery for UCFD Station 1 Headquarters on Shoe Factory Road, Calamari said.

When Harris arrived, the front desk employee was in the middle of using the department credit card to book hotel stays for firefighters who were going to out-of-town training. She paused her work to take boxes from Harris, placing the credit card on the keyboard of her computer.

The Fire Department employee informed Harris she had a package to send with him, at which point he went out to his truck and quickly returned with his personal cellphone, Calamari said.

As soon as the employee left the lobby to grab the outgoing box for Harris, he leaned over the counter of the guest window to view the area where the county credit card had been placed, all the while keeping his back to the security camera that was recording the scene, Calamari said.

She brought out the box, and Harris left to continue making deliveries.

A week later, the employee received the credit card statement and saw three charges that did not belong, and she immediately notified Union County Government, which in turn contacted the Sheriff’s Office. Six other charges showed up on April 8, and the employee reported those also.

Among the nine charges were $551.05 at an auto repair shop in Athens, $540 for a car insurance payment and five charges totaling $164 at an Athens-area gas station. There were also two charges by a production company, one for $2.36 and another for $2,100.

Fortunately, the bank was able to reverse the charges for the Fire Department, but this set up a scenario in which the repair shop called Harris to inform him that the payment had ultimately been declined and that he needed to settle the bill or face arrest over the incident, Calamari said.

As it turned out, Harris had made the payment to repair his mother’s car after she had been involved in an accident, and she ended up making the payment herself within a couple days of the charge reversing, Calamari said.

Still, Harris grew paranoid about the threat of arrest and called UCSO to ask if he had any active warrants here. Sgt. Calamari said no and invited him to town to clear things up, so Harris worked it into his delivery schedule to drop by the Sheriff’s Office on Thursday, April 17.

Sure enough – and to the surprise of investigators, especially given how the case concluded – Harris showed up as scheduled in his delivery truck.

During an initial interview, Harris started off by telling Calamari that he had provided his own credit card number to the repair shop and said the business must have entered the information incorrectly during the payment.

But Calamari had done his homework, bringing up other credit card charges that Harris decided he could not refute.

“Finally, he said, ‘I’ve got a question. What would happen if I did do something like this?’” Calamari said. “And I said, ‘I can’t work with a hypothetical situation – did you make these charges?’”

At that point, Harris admitted to making the charge at the repair shop, and in short order, he also confessed to making an insurance payment for his wife’s vehicle using the Fire Department credit card, Calamari said.

Harris was taken into custody that Thursday, and the Sheriff’s Office got a hold of his supervisor to deal with his delivery truck that was sitting in the UCSO parking lot. The supervisor came out to transfer packages that still needed to be delivered, and the truck was picked up that evening.

Three days later, Calamari brought Harris back into the interview room from the jail to ask some follow-up questions after additional investigation, and Harris admitted to the gas purchases as well, bringing the total number of explained fraudulent charges to seven of nine.

But he maintained he had no idea about the two credit card charges related to the production company, which UCSO was unable to tie to an actual business. Harris claimed he likely got scammed by someone with whom he used the card to pay for $125 in electronic screen repairs.

Remarkably, Harris told investigators he did not take a picture of the credit card but memorized the number inside Fire Station No. 1, later entering the info into a wallet app on his cellphone that allowed him to make in-person payments without the card being present, Calamari said.

“He told us that he was down on his luck, was having financial troubles, and he just got weak,” added UCSO Lt. Doug Brackett, who heads up the Criminal Investigations Division and assisted in this case.

Harris made his $10,000 bond at the Union County Jail last week, and he was released into the custody of Oconee County authorities to face his Watkinsville-area arrest warrant. He is presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law.