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June 17, 2008

Men booked for theft of $400,000 in property

Arrests made in joint operation between local authorities, Mesquite Police Dept.

By Rich Flowers

Two Dallas area men were arrested in Payne Springs last Friday in connection with the theft of property valued at more than $400,000 — including a pair of motor homes.

Forty-one-year-old Danny Ray Shelton and 41-year-old Scotty Wayne Ussery were each being held in the Henderson County Jail Tuesday with bond set at $200,000 for the first-degree felony theft charge. A first-degree felony is punishable by five to 99 years or life in prison upon conviction.

An additional $5,000 bond was set on Shelton for a Dallas County charge of unlawful use of motor vehicle.

Department of Public Safety Criminal Investigation Division Sgt. Richard Fulton said as a result of information gathered since the arrests, Shelton and Ussery are suspected of taking a pickup truck, a pontoon boat and other valuables, along with the motor homes. They are also expected to be charged with identity theft.

Mesquite Police contacted Fulton Friday concerning a motor home that had been reported stolen there. MPD officials informed Fulton they had located a suspect at 119 Huntington Trail in the Cherokee Shores subdivision in Payne Springs. Around 4 p.m. Friday, officers converged at the location and found two stolen motor homes. Shelton and Ussery were arrested without incident.

As Fulton arrested Ussery, he removed the suspect’s wallet and found a counterfeit driver’s license.

“He had already taken on the identity of the owner of one of the stolen mobile homes,” Fulton said.

Meanwhile, a Mesquite Police officer who was handcuffing Shelton discovered that he had assumed the identity of another mobile home theft victim.

Since the arrests, officers have discovered multiple items they believe the men had gathered to use against targeted victims of identity theft.

“Between yesterday and today, looking through their stuff, I found about 200 identities that they had,” Fulton said. “They had credit card receipts, expiration numbers and names. I also found checks that belonged to other people.”

In looking through information gathered at the scene of the arrest, Fulton found that one of the victim’s credit cards had been used to purchase a trailer from a Tractor Supply store in McAlester, Okla.

A F-350 Ford diesel pick-up recovered at the residence was also added to the list of hot items.

“The serial number had been changed and a fictitious serial number placed on it,” Fulton said.

Fulton said the mobile homes were high-quality residences. The suspects were living in the first one, taken from Balch Springs, when they stole the one from Mesquite.

“They had burned up the motor in one of the mobile homes the night before they stole the second one,” Fulton said. “They went out at about 1:30 in the morning on Thursday and stole it. Friday, they were moving stuff out of the motor home they tore up and putting it in the new stolen motor home when we drove up.”

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