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This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. A burglary at the bakery. Police in Bessemer say they have arrested two men in connection with the robbery of the Highlands Bakery earlier this afternoon.
On January 24th, 1983, at approximately 8:00 PM, Alvin Kennard and Wendell Davis robbed the Highlands Bakery in Bessemer, Alabama. The two men waited in an alley for the last customer to leave before entering through the front door wearing ski masks and wielding knives.
While Davis opened the cash register and stuffed his pockets, Alvin Kennard, the taller suspect, forced the young woman working the counter to the back of the store. He pushed her to the ground, held a knife to her throat, and threatened to kill her if she tried to intervene. "Let's go," Wendell Davis reportedly yelled to his accomplice. Both men ran out of the store and didn't stop until they made it to Davis' girlfriend's house. There, they tallied their haul.
A few crumpled bills and a roll of pennies. $50.75 in total. Within hours, the Bessemer police were knocking on the door. Witnesses had observed Wendell Davis and Alvin Kennard waiting outside of the bakery before the robbery. The cashier picked Kennard out of the lineup. The leather jacket and gold earring were a dead giveaway. So was the roll of pennies that was found in the men's possession.
It had the name and phone number of the bakery written on it. There was no question as to who was responsible for the theft. Wendell Davis even admitted to being there, but said Alvin Kennard committed the actual robbery. Alvin Kennard maintained his innocence and said it never happened. So in 1984, Alvin Kennard stood trial. The jury heard from several witnesses, the arresting officers and Alvin Kennard himself.
Alvin testified that he had been with Wendell Davis that night, but left for the park shortly before the robbery occurred. When the two men met back up at Wendell's girlfriend's house, the police arrived and they were taken into custody. Alvin said that while in the police car, Wendell Davis pulled a knife out and laid it on the seat. Alvin claimed he grabbed the knife and hit it in his shoe. It was an unlikely story, but Alvin Kennard had reason to lie.
Five years earlier, in 1979, when he was 18 years old, Kennard had pleaded guilty to grand larceny, burglary, and receiving stolen property in connection with a break-in at an unoccupied service station. Three charges, three years probation, and three strikes on Alvin Kennard's record in a state where, at the time, a fourth offense led to a mandatory life sentence without parole. Alvin Kennard wanted to avoid that fourth offense at all costs, even if it meant lying.
Unfortunately for Mr. Kennard, the jury was not swayed. He was found guilty of first-degree robbery, and under Alabama's Habitual Felony Offender Act, Alvin Kennard, at 22 years old, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for his role in the burglary of a bakery for $50.
Cunard had two prior felonies in 1979. And then in 1983, he got his third for robbing a bakery of only $50. At the time, three strikes meant a life without parole sentence. Life in prison for $50. Even by early 80s currency rates, most reasonable people agreed that it was a disproportionately harsh sentence. Someone should do something probably.
But the gears of justice turned slowly, even slower for a black man in Alabama. Two years after Alvin Kennard's sentence, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals decided that the trial court had erred in allowing testimony related to Wendell Davis' confession that had implicated Kennard. There was hope in the air that Alvin would be released soon, until the Alabama Supreme Court reversed the appeal. So in prison, he stayed. For years.
long after his hairline had receded and his beard had turned gray. But Alvin Kennard's positivity remained. He was a model inmate. Other than a few "settling in" issues in the early days, Alvin had stayed out of trouble the entire time. He'd found solace in God and the Bible. What else is one in that position supposed to do? You either spend the decades convincing yourself that everything happens for a reason, or else you'll go mad.
Alvin Kennard's prayers were answered 36 years later. In 2019, Jefferson County Bessemer Cut-Off Circuit Judge David Carpenter stumbled upon Kennard's case in some documents that just so happened to land on his desk. Judge Carpenter referred Kennard's unsettling case to Carla Crowder, an attorney and executive director of the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. She told ABC News that Judge Carpenter, quote, "...kind of went out of his way."
There was a document, a routine court document that came across his desk. He looked further into the case. He called me because I do this kind of work. I work for a nonprofit that works with people in poverty who are harmed by the criminal justice system. And he asked me if I would look into his case and take it. And when a judge calls you like that, you say, of course, yes, sir.
Carla Crowder told ABC News that when she first went to visit Alvin in jail, when the guard realized who she was visiting, he told her, quote, That's one that you could let him out and he wouldn't cause any more trouble. That reputation among the correctional staff was instrumental in setting Alvin free. Everyone that interacted with Alvin Kennard believed he had truly been rehabilitated. And so did he. I just want to say I'm sorry for what I did, Alvin told the court when his case was eventually reviewed.
More than a dozen friends and family members stood up in the gallery. Alvin's niece had maintained contact with him over the years, and there was already a room waiting for him at his brother's house where he could stay. On August 28th, 2019, Judge Carpenter changed Alvin Kennard's sentence to time served.
He would be released from prison in a matter of days. Hallelujah! Glory be to God for all his good things he has done and what he's about to do. Yes, all of us cried. All of us cried. We've just been praying and just trusting God that this day would come and it's here. We're so grateful to God. He had to be sentenced, but with it being so severe, we were just hoping that one day God would free him, and he did.
58-year-old Alvin Kennard spent his last few days at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility, giving away his possessions. His lawyer, Carla Crowder, told ABC that Alvin wanted to make sure that somebody else got his thermals so they could stay warm through the winter. It was the least he could do to pay forward the good fortune. Crowder also told the media that it was a bittersweet day for the criminal justice system in Alabama because, quote,
As incredible as this opportunity is for Mr. Kennard, and as happy as we are for him, we know that there are hundreds of similarly situated incarcerated people in the state who don't have attorneys, who don't have a voice. Sad but true. And even though Alabama's habitual felony offender law that put Alvin Kennard behind bars for most of his life was changed in the early 2000s to give judges more discretion in sentencing fourth-time offenders to life without parole,
Those changes were not retroactive. Questionable cases were not automatically prompted for review. Almon Kennard got lucky, if that's what you want to call it. Without the curious judge, he would probably still be sitting behind bars today. As Carla Crowder said, there were hundreds more in Alabama prisons in similar situations, serving excessive sentences. Those people may never again see the light of day.
One thing, though, that's important to point out is there are hundreds of men like Alvin serving sentences of life without parole.
for non homicide crimes. We know of 250 men serving life without parole in Alabama prisons for robbery only under our habitual offender law. It is an outdated draconian law that harms hundreds of people in our state. So I hope this case raises awareness that this gentleman is having a really
Alvin Kennard planned to have a great life moving forward. He wanted to get a job, go to church, and then go home and chill. Lord knows he's earned it. Recent reports indicate that Alvin was hired by a local body shop and is living well.
Mr. Kennard is correct. The devil is always at work. Be careful who you let get into your ear, he said.
Because it's not easy to resist temptation. That second cupcake. That fourth drink. That last cigarette. That extra money. It would make all of your problems go away, wouldn't it? Think about how easy it would be to just walk in and take it. It's right there in front of you. Open your fists, you coward, and demand what you are rightfully owed.
Nah, don't listen to that voice, or else you might find yourself robbing a bakery for $50 and serving a life sentence, or working for tips and Patreon dollars. Or at least some of us would. You should aim higher. Maybe even get a job at that bakery. Brown knows the boss on your way up to middle management, and then slowly robbed a place of $16 million from the inside. Now that's ambition. That's what separates the haves from the have-nots.
Who cares if you get caught? It's not like they'd give you a life sentence. Isn't that right, Sandy Jenkins? An unassuming accountant embezzles millions of dollars from the most famous fruitcake company in the world on this episode of Swindled.
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The city of Corsicana, population just under 25,000, is the county seat of Navarro County.
This charming community in northeast central Texas is located 53 miles southeast of the Dallas-Hortworth Metroplex and 54 miles northeast of Waco. It's where oil was first discovered west of the Mississippi and thus was the first Texas oil boom town. It's also the birthplace of Mobile, Texaco, Wolf Brand Chili, and the Collins Street Bakery.
In 1896, a German baker named August Weidman partnered with entrepreneur Tom McElwee to launch a brand new business in the oil boom town of Corsicana, Texas. The Collins Street Bakery became an instant favorite. People were flocking to Corsicana for the money gushing from the ground and staying for the bread. As the town grew, so did the bakery. Weidman and McElwee eventually built an elegant hotel on the top floor and served fresh cookies, pies, and fruitcakes to their A-list guests.
The Collin Street Bakery even started to garner a bit of international fame. Legend has it that just after the turn of the century, John Ringling and his traveling circus had fallen in love with Collin Street Bakery's deluxe fruitcake. Dried papayas, pineapples, cherries, raisins, and pecans, hand decorated and bound together by a minimal amount of locally sourced honey batter. Members of the Ringling's troop reportedly asked to have these cakes sent to their family and friends throughout Europe.
Thus, a Christmas tradition and international mail order business was born. Just after the turn of the century, Ringling Brothers had come through. They bought a lot of our cakes and they went on overseas. They handed them out to family and friends who then wrote us letters saying, "Please send us another one of those cakes." And that's kind of how we took off internationally. Fruitcakes were the perfect product. It takes months for them to go bad. They can be shipped anywhere and people all over the world were willing to buy them apparently.
But it wasn't until 1967 that the company's vision was fully realized. Bill McNutt, who had inherited Collin Street Bakery from his father, Lee McNutt, who had purchased the business from Weidman and McElwee in 1946, constructed an entire factory solely focused on the production of fruitcakes.
McNutt had also invested in a computer system to expand the company's reach. He used direct marketing, inventory, and mailing list database strategies to promote the brand. And McNutt was among the first to adopt emerging communications technologies like the fax machine and the internet. What started as a small Texas bakery has blossomed into a global mail order business.
Made daily from scratch, using only the finest ingredients, our baked goods are shipped to all 50 states and 196 foreign countries and are backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee. In fact, we will produce almost 1 million cakes this year. That's pretty amazing for a family-owned and operated business in the quaint little Texas town of Corsicana. Bill McNutt's fruitcake pioneering paid off. The business transcended the small town where it was born.
By the time Bill's son Bob took over the company in 1998, Collin Street Bakery was an international household name. The company was shipping 4 million pounds of fruitcake every year. They'd sold fruitcakes to celebrities like Frank Sinatra and dignitaries like the Queen of Spain. The product was visible in the background of a scene in The Godfather. One of the bakery's fruitcakes even made it onto the Apollo spacecraft. The list of accomplishments goes on.
Who who special has ordered from Collins Street Bakery presidents United States presidents of order our cakes Queens of England Really says yeah princess grace ordered them her daughter Caroline now orders them Wow Nolan Ryan
Lyle Lovett. Really? Vanna White. Vanna. Oh, Vanna. Yeah, they're all customers of ours. That's so cool. The Collins Street Bakery became a symbol of civic pride in Corsicana, Texas. It was a 100-year-old family business, an ever-expanding major employer, and an endless supply of delicious fruitcakes. What's not to love? So it's a nice place. We're very proud of them. Been around forever. They put us on the map.
It was that sense of family and community and history that greeted Sandy Jenkins when he started working for Collin Street Bakery in 1998. Sandy was a middle-aged accounts payable supervisor with a three-year gap in his resume and a fresh diagnosis of manic depression. He and Kay Jenkins, his wife of 27 years, had moved to Corsicana in the late 80s when Sandy's job was transferred.
In 1995, Sandy Jenkins was laid off from that job. He spent the next few years volunteering at the First Baptist Church and substitute teaching at the junior high school. Kay helped make ends meet with her catering business and teaching yoga classes at the YMCA. This is not what Sandy Jenkins had planned. As a child, Sandy dreamed big. He pictured himself in expensive suits, a flashy watch on his wrist, a fancy car in his driveway.
Naturally, these material desires led Sandy into exploring a potential career as a funeral home director. He thought they dressed nicely in that profession. Sandy had been voted most fashionable three years in a row during high school, so it was a natural fit. But Sandy's father, who owned one of the two grocery stores in Wortham, the town where the Jenkinses lived, talked his son off of that path into something more traditional and secure.
Now Sandy was just some 50-year-old zilch with a degree in business administration, the default degree for 18-year-olds who have yet to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives. But as underwhelmed with his life as Sandy Jenkins may have been, it really wasn't as unfulfilling as he made it seem.
Sandy and Kay had raised a daughter who was enrolled in culinary school. They had a dachshund named Maggie who they adored. And the Jenkinses had one Corsicana's yard of the month on multiple occasions. See, it's not so bad. In terms of material possessions, the Jenkinses owned a lovely house with Greek columns and a wraparound porch. Sandy drove a Lexus. It was an older model, but still, a Lexus. And he continued to dress well, albeit on a budget.
and there was more to come because Sandy had a new job, finally. A salary. $25,000 a year. Thanks to the efforts and prayers of fellow members of the church. The Jenkins' life was quaint, but quaint didn't cut it in Corsicana's high society. Not with those shoes.
Some of those families were up to their ears in old oil money. They'd never worked a day in their lives. They spent their times at wine tastings, dinner parties, and country clubs. Sandy Jenkins desperately wanted in. But not even the multi-time Yard of the Month winner could garner an invite. The Jenkinses were ignored. So it's no wonder Sandy Jenkins couldn't help but feel a little bit of resentment towards his new boss, the owner of Collin Street Bakery, Bob McNutt.
He was one of the most famous faces in town. If we're making something that these people care about, and the people here and the people that helped put this product together, they're wonderful people and they have a great attitude and they take pride in what they do. Yeah, that's him. Mr. Silver Spoon. Mr. Born on third base, flying around the world on a private jet while his employees are stuck in fruitcake drudgery to collect a meager pay.
It's not fair, Sandy Jenkins used to think to himself. That should be me, but it wasn't. Because Bob McNutt was interesting. Bob McNutt was charming. Bob McNutt was everything that Sandy Jenkins wanted to be. Sandy was small and timid. He had a soft chin and even less of a personality. There was a portrait of a dog in his office, but other than that, nobody knew anything about him. Sandy had a hard time fitting in.
He mostly squeaked by unnoticed day after day. One small talk conversation after another. "How's the family, Bill?" "Is that a new haircut, Tina?" "Happy anniversary, Charlie." "That's a good one, Bob." At least Sandy performed his duties well. His supervisor liked him. Two years into the job, Sandy got a raise and a promotion. Doubled his salary. Sandy Jenkins was given the title of "Collin Street Bakery's newest controller." He became the "head accountant," basically.
Sandy was in charge of running payroll and paying taxes and issuing checks to the company's vendors. A lot of trust was given to him by the company with very little oversight. That kind of trust is vital in a small family-owned operation like Collins Street Bakery. In a way, with the new powers granted, Sandy Jenkins had become part of the family. And soon enough, Sandy Jenkins would be helping himself to the family jewels. Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.
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Sandy Jenkins' fraud scheme started slow. In December 2004, he pocketed a few dollars from Collin Street Bakery's petty cash fund. It was a negligible amount of money, but it made him feel good.
It was like dipping a toe in the swimming pool to test the water before diving into the deep end. How much could Sandy take? Would anyone notice? What would he say if they did? $50 here and there, sometimes $100. Nobody was getting hurt. Besides, they didn't pay him enough anyway. His wife Kay had said so too.
From skimming a few dollars out of petty cash to full-scale fraud, a crooked accountant can do serious damage and leave you holding the bag. Within weeks, Sandy Jenkins got ballsier. Before the end of 2004, he spontaneously traveled 55 miles north to Dallas to upgrade his ride.
According to Katie Vine at Texas Monthly, later that day, Jenkins drove home in a new gold Lexus, quote, blasting Barbra Streisand all the way down Interstate 45. He had never felt so alive. The new car raised Kay Jenkins' eyebrow. Her husband had never said anything about buying a new vehicle, and unless he had been given another raise or some kind of bonus, she was pretty sure they could not afford it.
But Sandy eased his wife's fears. He told her the extra money had come from the Fisher family, a rich vendor who did business with the bakery. Sandy said he had been doing accounting work for the Fishers on the side and that the new Lexus was their gift to him. And there was more, a lot more to come. Do not worry about a thing.
On January 25th, 2005, the day that his credit card bill came due, Sandy Jenkins escalated his fraud. He printed a check for $20,000 from Collins Street Bakery's account, paid to the order of Citibank. Every check was automatically signed by the owner, Bob McNutt.
Sandy used that check to pay his personal credit card bill and then voided it in Collin Street's financial system to hide it from prying eyes. He then created a phony check in the system payable to a legit vendor, like the Navarro Pecan Company, to match the missing amount. The check numbers wouldn't match, but the bottom line would reconcile. And that's really the only thing that his superiors seemed to care about. Sandy was confident that he'd never get caught. There was no one looking over his shoulder.
The bakery hadn't audited itself since 1998. As the chief controller of the company, Sandy Jenkins had total control with no internal controls. Ripping the place off would be a piece of cake. And he was right. Nobody noticed the first time. So he did it again.
To be exact, between 2005 and 2013, Sandy Jenkins did it 887 more times. He used the same method for each check he cashed. Void the original in the system and replace it with a more legitimate looking uncashed check for the same amount. It worked like a charm.
Soon the Jenkinses were remodeling their kitchen, complete with new countertops, high-end appliances, and a built-in wine cellar underneath the stairs. Sandy also purchased new window treatments, flooring, roofing, and plumbing. Those improvements alone had cost almost $50,000.
and the spending did not end there. Sandy bought new shoes and clothes for work. $600 a shirt sometimes. Gucci, Armani, Ferragamo. He also spent thousands and thousands of dollars on watches. In December 2006, he bought five Rolexes in one day, which amounted to more than Sandy's annual salary. Or at least the salary he was legitimately being paid.
Sandy also purchased a $60,000 Steinway piano and a $40,000 horsehair mattress and enough wine and champagne to last a lifetime. He rotated the artwork in his office and only wrote with the most expensive pens. People at work noticed, but Sandy Jenkins clearly wasn't trying to hide his newfound wealth. Sometimes the jeweler from Dallas would visit Sandy on the job at Collins Street Bakery and sell to him there.
Yeah, people noticed. Sandy Jenkins wanted them to. That was the whole point. The once-forgotten Jenkinses were now the talk of the town. They joined book clubs, dinner clubs, country clubs, wine clubs, brunch clubs, and more. They were brushing shoulders and having a gas with the Corsicana elite. Sandy and Kay even quit volunteering at the church because they had bought new friends. It seemed like they could afford anything.
When asked where it came from, Sandy would tell people that he and Kay inherited the money, and that Kay had a cousin with a private plane that they were free to use. To explain a constant rotation of new cars, Sandy told those curious that he flipped them for profit 44 times over nine years. "I'm looking at cars that are $100,000 to $200,000 and I'm thinking, 'My God, he must have won the lottery!' A schmuck working at College Street Bakery doesn't make that kind of money!"
Kay Jenkins received some of those cars too. In fact, Kay bought the exact same Lexus in the exact same color multiple times so people wouldn't realize how often she was turning them over. One time Kay even returned a two-seat Lexus convertible to the dealership because it wasn't peacock blue. The new model was midnight blue. She was afraid the neighbors would talk.
It hadn't taken long for Kay Jenkins to go all in with Sandy. She actually quit her job soon after the first check cleared the bank. Kay did not know exactly where the money was coming from, but she knew it wasn't legitimate. She had asked Sandy about it several times over the years, but he would never get into specifics. However, he did admit that the income was not being reported to the IRS.
Sandy also told Kay to never mention his quote "contract work" around anyone at the bakery. "Tell them we inherited it," he coached her to say. Kay assumed the money must have been some kind of back-channel kickback related to Collins Street. Sandy told her the money would stop the instant he died.
So the Jenkinsons enjoyed it while it lasted and spent $250,000 a month for almost a decade. They flew private to Aspen, Napa Valley, Martha's Vineyard, and a Caribbean resort. They bought a vacation home in Santa Fe, New Mexico for $784,000. Kay Jenkins had actually co-signed the mortgage for that vacation home, knowing damn well that her husband did not make $25,000 a month as he had claimed in the application.
Who was she to judge? Have you seen the view? Sandy and Kay Jenkins were just fortunate, that's all. That's just the way the world works. Bless your heart, little one. Just work a little harder. And someday, that could be you.
To their credit, the Jenkinsons weren't afraid to give back to the commoners. Sandy did what all rich guys love to do. He donated large sums of money to schools and arts programs. Maybe one day they'd name a building after him. You never know. A boy can dream. On other days when he was feeling generous at the office, Sandy would descend from the executive floor to pronounce that he would be buying lunch for all the peasants working the front counter of the bakery.
Look at him, lining up like hardy mules to shake his soft manicured hand. Meanwhile, the other executives at Collins Street Bakery were huddled together, trying to figure out why the business wasn't growing. Year after year, their projections were falling short. Perhaps they expanded too quickly. No, it couldn't be. It was probably the economy.
To snuff out the problems, Collin Street Bakery turned an eye inward. The company reviewed almost every operation in the building to pinpoint the bleeding. They analyzed labor costs, inventory theft, ingredients pricing, and mismanagement. They audited the payroll. Everything was clean. That Sandy Jenkins always does such a good job. Hayden Crawford, the bakery's marketing chief, told the Associated Press, quote,
We were so focused on every other part of the business and so confident in the integrity of our people that we overlooked the elephant in the room.
That elephant in the room was wearing a new designer shirt and a different Rolex every day. But the executive team at Collins Street Bakery chalked up the losses to the grand openings of their new brick-and-mortar stores around Central Texas. Sometimes there are unforeseen costs involved with such projects. The company had also spent an enormous sum of money developing the world's largest organic pineapple plantation in Costa Rica to source their own ingredients. They later sold the plantation to Dole,
El Pupo strikes again. As a result of all the construction and development that the Collins Street Bakery had been paying for at the time, there were hundreds if not thousands of inflows and outflows from the company's accounts every month. And whether by pure accident or brilliant design, Sandy Jenkins timed his skimming during those periods of heavy transaction. He also knew when the bakery purchased inventory, so a random check here and there for a predictable amount was always lost in the shuffle.
No one had a clue, except for one time, according to Texas Monthly. One time, Sandy's supervisor Scott Holliman, the bakery's chief financial officer, approached the director of e-commerce about overspending on promotion for Collins Street subsidiaries. Darlene Johnston reportedly looked over the numbers and said, "...I didn't spend $23,000 on postage. That's crazy."
Of course, trusted controller Sandy Jenkins would get to the bottom of this, and he did. It was probably just a misclassed expense, he told them. Easy to fix. No problems. But the stress of what he was doing might have been eating away at Sandy Jenkins. In late 2012, he suffered a heart attack. Sandy survived, but he would miss some time at work. A new accountant at Collins Street Bakery adopted some of her fallen comrade's job duties back in the office.
All of a sudden there were new eyes on the company's books and bank statements. And that's all it would take to put an end to Sandy Jenkins' scheme. Jenkins was funding the Suite Life for himself and his wife Kay, using company money to pay off his credit card. He got away with it for eight years, embezzling around $16 million. Something's not adding up, Symmetra Walker thought to herself on June 20th, 2013.
During her short time as an accounting clerk at Collins Street Bakery, the former bank teller had been witness to a few quirks like: check numbers in the system not matching the statements, but never anything like this. While preparing the monthly bank reconciliation, Symetric discovered that a check for $20,000 had been used to pay a postal bill of $10,000. Even stranger, the check was made out to Capital One.
Knowing that Collin Street Bakery held no accounts at Capital One, Symmetra took the questionable entries to her boss for review. "Oh, I know what it is," Sandy Jenkins told Walker. "I'll fix it tomorrow." And then he left work for the rest of the day. Sandy and Kay were scheduled to view a property later that afternoon. It was in Mills Place, one of Corsicana's nicest neighborhoods. He did not want to be late.
Something about her interaction with Sandy didn't sit right with Symmetric Walker. She noticed that Sandy "started to fidget and move his hands a lot" when she showed him the check. She remembered Sandy's face turning ghostly pale. And on top of that, his explanation made no sense. So Symmetric Walker launched her own investigation. She pulled up similar postal bills that had been paid by check in the past and almost immediately found 16 similar discrepancies, more than $280,000 worth.
Symetric also perused the voided check register and found $400,000 worth of checks that in reality had been cashed. The pattern was indisputable. At that moment, Symetric said she feared for her life. She wasn't sure exactly what she had just stumbled into. But Symetric Walker did the right thing. She brought her findings to Scott Holliman, Collins Street's CFO and Sandy Jenkins' friend and church buddy. Hopefully, Scott would appreciate her attention to detail.
The next day, June 21, 2013, Scott Holloman and Collins Street COO Larry Jenkins were waiting for Sandy Jenkins at the front door. They took Sandy to an office upstairs, sat him down, and confronted him about the $20,000 check for the postal bill. At first, Sandy Jenkins blamed it on a glitch, promised to fix it, and then went out for lunch. When he returned, Holloman and Larry Jenkins sat Sandy down again.
"What about these?" he was asked, in reference to the voided checks that were now stacked in front of him. "Would it do any good if I admit it?" Sandy replied. "Not saying I am guilty, but would it go easier?" "No promises," he was told. So Sandy Jenkins stopped talking. He was fired on the spot. Scott Holloman escorted Sandy to his desk to collect some personal belongings before he exited the Collin Street Bakery for the last time.
On the way out, Sandy told Scott that his life was ruined. He said he would lose his wife and daughter, but quote, "If I did this, I guess I deserve it." By the end of Symetric Walker's internal investigation, she had discovered that Sandy Jenkins, over nine years, had stolen $16,649,786.91 in checks from the bakery and more than $114,000 in cash.
Sandy Jenkins used money from the fruitcake bakery to buy fancy cars, furs, and vacations. That was just nutty. Ha ha. That's a good one, Bob. On the way home from his last day of work, Sandy Jenkins withdrew $200,000 in cashier's checks from his bank account. He withdrew tens of thousands more in the next few days. Sandy told Kay what was happening, and together they collected all the cash and jewelry that could fit into a Whole Foods shopping bag.
They hopped in one of their vehicles paid for by embezzlement and fled Corsicana for Austin, where their daughter stayed. Sandy told his daughter to stash the bag somewhere else outside of her apartment. He referred to it as his retirement fund. It was very important to him, he explained. Then he and Kay flew to Santa Fe, where they laid low for the next month.
When the Jenkinsons returned to Austin on July 24th, 2015, they were greeted with the news that the FBI was currently searching their house and storage lockers in Corsicana. Apparently there was a traffic jam of rubbernecking neighbors in front of his house trying to catch a glimpse at all the treasures that were being removed.
A half-dozen federal agents filled two cargo vans with millions of dollars worth of handbags, furs, wine, and jewelry, including Sandy Jenkins' obscene watch collection. More than a hundred luxury timepieces were eventually confiscated, including two Rolexes that Sandy gave to his attorney for compensation.
Numerous others would be found at the bottom of Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin a few days later. Upon advice from her lawyer, Sandy's daughter had refused to hide the 60-pound Whole Foods bag of valuables, so Sandy took it upon himself to scatter the contents around the town lake hike and bike trail. Sandy eventually ran out of hiding spots and dumped the remaining contents of the bag into the water. It almost brought a tear to his eye.
Later that day, something shiny on the lake's floor caught the eye of an off-duty University of Texas police officer. A search of the area turned up more than $500,000 worth of gold and jewelry. The serial numbers on the items trace back to Sandy Jenkins, who was finally arrested on August 12, 2013.
The indictment alleged that 65-year-old Sandy Jenkins used more than $16 million of Collins Street Bakery funds to bankroll a lavish lifestyle. He was charged with 10 counts of mail fraud and 3 counts of money laundering. Two days after Sandy's arrest, Kay Jenkins filed for divorce. She accused Sandy of perpetrating fraud against her by dragging her into his brain death scheme.
Kay maintained her innocence. She even asked for a polygraph test to prove it. But the authorities knew that Jenkins' lies were coordinated. They had access to Sandy's email, including one to Kay that read, quote,
On March 12, 2014, a federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment that charged Kay Jenkins with conspiracy to commit money laundering as well as making a false statement to a financial institution for co-signing on the Santa Fe home.
She pleaded guilty on June 2, 2015 to the money laundering conspiracy charge. In the court filing, Kay did finally admit to conspiring with Sandy to spend the money he had embezzled, but she was adamant that she didn't know where it was coming from. Kay said she had, quote, deliberately closed her eyes to the source. Kay Jenkins received five years probation for her involvement.
She was also ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and submit a formal written apology to the bakery. So sorry, it won't happen again. A month earlier, Sandy Jenkins pleaded guilty to mail fraud, money laundering conspiracy, and making a false statement to a financial institution. He agreed to pay full restitution of more than $16 million to the bakery. More than $12 million was still owed, even after a massive estate sale.
Sandy Jenkins was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He died after serving a little less than four. Sandy was a friend, a trusted associate. Hayden Crawford at Collin Street Bakery told the Associated Press, "...we were operating a 117-year-old business, much like it had always been run."
It goes without saying we've learned our lesson and made the necessary changes to safeguard us from this kind of thing in the future. But when this was going down, our suspicions fell on everything except our own people, he added. We are obviously far better at making a quality fruitcake than spotting a thief. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. Deformer, a.k.a. Trevor McNutt.
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My name is Joel from Vancouver, Canada. My name is Amanda Peters from Scotland. My name is Malik Sala from Youngstown, Ohio, and I am a concerned citizen and valued listener. Real quick, I just wanted to say thank you for the last couple of years. I started listening to you when I first started medical school, and now I'm kind of winding down towards...
my last year and you've been around for the whole ride with me keeping me sane for a lot of it so thank you for that and thank you for helping me go into my future I appreciate it
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