Truck driver sentenced for cargo theft
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – A Tennessee truck driver has been sentenced in Missouri for his role in what federal prosecutors called a multistate cargo theft scheme.
The U.S. Attorney’s office says 49-year-old Michael Lee Sherley, of Memphis, was sentenced Thursday to four years and six months in federal prison without parole.
Sherley pleaded guilty earlier to stealing a trailer containing $73,000 worth of canned corn from a truck stop in West Plains, Missouri, in May 2013. The corn was being shipped from Minnesota to a food bank in Arkansas.
Sherley worked for his uncle, Memphis resident Earl Stanley Nunn, owner of Nu World Trucking. Nunn has also pleaded guilty to theft of an interstate shipment.
Prosecutors said the scheme involved stealing unattended, loaded semi-trailers from truck stops and driving them to Chicago and Detroit to be sold.
