A Michigan man is accused of stealing nearly 2,000 key fobs from new vehicles that passed through a CSX rail yard where he worked.
Jason Gibbs, 41, was charged last week after a two-year investigation into why so many vehicles made by General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles had been arriving at their destination with one of their two key fobs missing. All of the vehicles missing fobs had been shipped from the CSX yard in New Boston, Mich., near Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
Investigators cracked the case after finding some of the missing fobs for sale on eBay. They bought three Ford F-150 fobs and traced the payment for postage to Gibbs' debit card, according to an affidavit from a U.S. postal inspector.
The return address was an abandoned home in Detroit where Gibbs had grown up.
Gibbs worked for a CSX contractor as a utility porter, a job that involved preparing vehicles to be loaded onto rail cars and fixing problems with their batteries, tires and bodies.
The eBay account "i_love_12volts," which Gibbs admitted to using, sold 1,914 fobs for a total of $60,570 between December 2017 and May 2018, the postal inspector said. No fobs were reported missing after Gibbs was fired in May 2018.
Most of the fobs, which the automakers said were worth an average of $250, were sold to a single buyer in California who then allegedly resold them for prices ranging from $69 to $160. They were then apparently reprogrammed to be used on other vehicles.
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