Three men were arrested Monday night after they were accused of trying to persuade homeless men to steal cellphones from Walmart.
Lashawn Morant, of Tallahassee, and Jamah Hearn and Answan Geriman Wright, of St. Petersburg, asked a man at Bo Diddley Community Plaza if he wanted to make money buying cellphones.
The man, Todd Page Emory, agreed.
He climbed into the rented red Jeep, and the group went to the Super Walmart on Waldo Road, according to a Gainesville Police arrest report.
The three men sent Emory into the store to get information about buying a family cellphone plan. When he returned to the men, they instructed him to go back and buy the plan, according to the report.
Then, the group told him to call later and cancel the plan so they could reprogram the phones and sell them, according to the report.
Emory then backed out and said he didn’t want to be responsible for the payments. The other three men took him back to Bo Diddley Plaza and picked up John Wiley Hines, another homeless man who agreed to go, according to the report.
While Hines was in the store, a Walmart loss-prevention officer alerted GPD that another man was trying to make a suspicious cellphone purchase, and officers traced the scheme back to Morant, Hearn and Wright.
They were arrested and booked into the Alachua County Jail on charges of scheming to defraud and obtain property. As of press time, Hearn remained with bond at $5,000. Morant and Wright had been released.
Had the plan succeeded, Walmart would have lost about $1,500, according to the report.
Contact Kelcee Griffis at kgriffis@alligator.org.
