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A now-former Walmart employee was arrested last Friday after admitting to "phantom swiping" more than $4,000 worth of items through self-checkout registers over the course of six months.
Johnny Napier, Jr., 54, already had active warrants in three counties prior to his arrest late last week. He now has a new shoplifting charge, which adds to his collection – a simple assault warrant from the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office, a failure to appear warrant in Gwinnett County and a probation violation warrant in Douglas County.
Napier "failed to scam items at the self-checkout registers over multiple days," a Walmart loss prevention agent told the responding Milledgeville Police Department officer. The loss prevention agent had Napier on video three different times over the course of four weeks, adding up to $347 worth of merchandise, according to the police report.
Napier then sort of told on himself, however, informing the loss prevention agent that it was actually $4,200 over the course of six months. Napier then confirmed this dollar amount again to the MPD officer, and he even agreed to write out a statement asserting that it was $4,200 and not $347. The threshold for felony shoplifting in the state of Georgia is $1,500, while anything less than that is a misdemeanor.
Napier previously did four different stints in state prison and was booked at the county jail 11 times between 1989 and 1998. After getting out of prison in 2005, however, Napier has never been back, and he hadn't been arrested in Baldwin County since 2008, at least prior to last week.
