ELKTON — A man who stole more than $500,000 in merchandise from his Elkton-area employer during a six-month period in 2019 must pay $150,000 in restitution as part of a sentence that he received after accepting a plea deal, according to Cecil County Circuit Court records.
Cecil County Circuit Court Judge Keith A. Baynes imposed a 10-year sentence on the defendant — Andre Ali Sutton, 40, of Newark, Del. — on Feb. 22 and then suspended the penalty, after Assistant State’s Attorney Ellis Rollins and Sutton’s Baltimore-based defense lawyer, Leonard Gutkoska, had reached a plea agreement.
The judge levied the sentence moments after Sutton pleaded guilty to theft scheme to steal more than $100,000, court records show. In exchange for the guilty plea, prosecutors dismissed two related theft charges included on an indictment that a Cecil County grand jury handed up against Sutton in July 2020, according to court records.
Baynes placed Sutton on three years of supervised probation and ordered him to pay $150,000 in restitution within that time period, court records show. Moreover, the judge ordered Sutton to set up a payment plan for that $150,000 reimbursement through the Cecil County Department of Parole & Probation, court records show.
Although Sutton stole approximately $530,000 in merchandise from the victim, UPS Freight, a business located at 250 Belle Hill Rd. near Elkton, Maryland State Police investigators were able to recover about $380,000 of that property at a commercial warehouse in Kentucky, prosecutors explained.
Sutton committed his theft scheme between Jan. 1, 2019 and June 30, 2019 while working as an operations manager at UPS Freight, according to court records and prosecutors.
In general, Sutton would take some pallets of merchandise at that UPS Freight site near Elkton and reroute them to a company in Kentucky for payment, prosecutors said. At some point after Sutton started redirecting merchandise to that Kentucky company, UPS Freight management noticed discrepancies on the books and then contacted authorities, which led to an MSP investigation, prosecutors added.
Sutton had a clean record until he was arrested, charged and convicted in this criminal case, prosecutors said, adding that he now works elsewhere after UPS Freight terminated his employment.
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