Neal joins ex-wife in pleading guilty to thefts

A man who testified against his ex-wife earlier in the week about theft charges pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme on Friday.

Troy Neal pleaded guilty to two counts of theft of property between $500 and $1,000, and theft under $500, and was sentenced by Circuit Court Judge Lee Russell to serve 162 days in jail before he is eligible for parole.

A felony charge of theft between $1,000 and $10,000 was dismissed.

Neal and his ex-wife Kerri were accused of lifting thousands of dollars worth of weight-loss and make-up items from the shelves of several area Walmarts and selling them on the popular Internet auction site eBay.

The couple were stealing Alli weight loss products and Olay make-up from the shelves of the Shelbyville, Tullahoma and Manchester Walmarts, as well as others in the region and the arrest of the pair was the result of cooperation between Shelbyville and Tullahoma investigators.

The Neals, who confessed to the thefts following their arrests, would go to the stores between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. to steal the products, according to Detective Sgt. Brian Crews of the Shelbyville Police Department.

After receiving information from Tullahoma police, Crews checked the eBay site and narrowed his search to within 10 miles of Shelbyville to see if the couple was selling the stolen products online.

Crews found an eBay user named "sweet-sassy-2" and Detective Charles Merlo also checked MySpace and found that Kerri Neal was using the same user name.

Photos on Kerri's MySpace page were also compared to video surveillance of the Walmart thefts, which Crews' report said confirmed their suspicion that the Neals were involved.

Close to 60 bottles of the weight loss drug were recovered when the pair was arrested and some of the items had already been sold on eBay.

Kerri changed her plea to guilty about two thirds of the way through her trial on Tuesday after Troy testified against her.