When a job starts feeling repetitive, some people look for a hobby or a side hustle to spice things up. Antwone Tate, a former FedEx worker from Memphis, seems to have taken a far more audacious route: apparently embarking on a treasure hunt among the parcels passing through his hands. Unfortunately for him, a detour into diamond and gold pilfering landed him straight into the lap of legal troubles instead of a pot of gold at the end of the logistical rainbow.
From the get-go, it sounds like the plot of a modern-day pirate epic, featuring Tate as the protagonist who exchanged his drab uniform for a plundering persona. His alleged escapade began to unravel when, on May 27, FedEx’s Loss Prevention team noticed that a few heavily insured packages vanished without a trace at the Memphis Hub. No X marking any suspicious ground was necessary here; it was stellar detective work coupled with the trail of previously sparkling goods that led officials straight to a local pawn shop. In a plot twist worthy of a sitcom, it turns out Tate thought using his own driver’s license when cashing in these ill-gotten gains would fly under the raider. Spoiler alert: It didn’t.
Among the many delights Tate reportedly handpicked from the labyrinthine world of FedEx parcels was an $8,500 diamond ring. Close on its heels were nearly $14,000 worth of gold bars which, unlike dead men, do actually tell tales, especially when found lying in a pawnshop with a rather convenient connection. Just think of the pawn shop employee’s disbelief upon realizing they held more gold bars than a moderately successful gold prospector!
But the story doesn’t culminate there. No, Tate’s version of Ocean’s Eleven didn’t stop with just shiny treasures. Picture this: a cardboard box full of collector dreams, where cardboard meets nostalgia. This delight in the form of another package, brimming with vintage baseball cards, also vanished. Any collector’s heart would skip a beat to nab a 1915 Cracker Jack Chief Bender or a 1933 Goudey Sport Kings Ty Cobb from their respective timelines. This set, estimated at around $6,800, was another feather in the cap of what one could now call Tate’s “heist series.”
However, any sleuthing hobbyist used to stumbling across peculiar eBay accounts could tell you this next chapter of the saga was almost too predictable. The police tracked the precious cards to an account bearing the name antta_57. If this pseudonym doesn’t raise enough suspicion to match Tate’s identity, I don’t know what will. Tracing the account was child’s play, considering it might as well have been called “iamguilty_100” – direct, to the point, and a solid fit for true crime mystery podcasts.
As a fitting conclusion to this real-life heist opera, Tate is now charged with the theft of property, facing the not-so-sympathetic harmony of courtroom proceedings. Meanwhile, FedEx made sure to clarify their stance with a succinct but pointed statement. He is no longer in their employ, an unsurprising consequence of actions that firmly defy the company handbook. As a reminder to all aspiring package heister wannabes, yes, stealing is distinctly not part of the job description.
And so the tale of Antwone Tate waves goodbye to his brief stint as a self-styled package pirate, with an important lesson for all: when your tracking info says “out for delivery,” and delivery goes AWOL, there’s a chance it’s traversing the wild world of pixels on eBay. Do exercise caution before bidding on anything listed by antta_58 though. You never quite know what sort of misadventures your new acquisition might have embarked upon.
