Neal sentenced to 3 years for area Walmart thefts

A woman who pleaded guilty to stealing items from Walmart and selling them on the Internet was given a sentence of three years on Friday.

Circuit Court Judge Lee Russell ruled that Kerri Neal will serve the three-year sentence consecutive to any other jail time she has been given.

She had been charged with two counts of theft of property between $500 and $1,000 and theft under $500. An additional charge of theft between $1,000 and $10,000 had been dismissed.

In the middle of her trial last month, Neal changed her plea to guilty after her ex-husband Troy testified against her.

The couple had been accused of taking 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.

Neal apologized for the thefts, stating that her addition to pills was the reason she took the items and sold them. Her attorney, Ray Fraley, stated that the thefts took place only over the period of a few months and asked Russell to give Neal probation, an alternative sentence or community corrections.

But assistant district attorney Mike Randles pointed out that the Neals made their living selling the stolen items and that Kerri now has 10 other convictions in middle Tennessee counties related to the scheme, calling it "a massive amount of theft."

Russell agreed that the thefts were "a major operation involving a lot of counties" and even though the thefts took place over a short time period, Neal now has an extensive criminal record.

The couple, who confessed to the thefts following their arrests, 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 middle Tennessee area. The arrest of the pair resulted from cooperation between Shelbyville and Tullahoma investigators.

According to Detective Sgt. Brian Crews of the Shelbyville Police Department, the Neals would go to the stores between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. to steal the products.

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.

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