Florida Man Steals 50,000 Boxes Of Citrus Fruit
The common food pyramid implies that people should eat two to four servings of fruit a day. While that may seem like a tall order to some, it won’t stop stores and vendors from trying to keep their customers healthy. Of course, one man decided to take that noble goal into his own hands — and faced arrest because of it.
To be fair, Bradley Reiter of Winter Haven, Florida, wasn’t exactly working with a clean slate. In March 2014 he was contracted to harvest oranges and grapefruit from the local groves, but he ended up taking it too far. He never paid the grove owners for the fruit he harvested, and despite aims to sell his bounty he didn’t have the license to do so legally. Even then, he made off with a huge amount of fruit over time — roughly 50,000 boxes, or a worth of $540,000.
Reiter might not have gotten far enough in his plan to profit, but he did make it far enough to get in legal trouble. In his quest to build a citrus stockpile, he ended up making deals with three separate groves, forming his own company to distribute the fruit, and most distressingly, he entered a grove in Bartow without permission to steal their harvest. Given how far he went, it’s safe to assume Reiter didn’t have the best of intentions — and now his arrest has likely left him with a bitter taste in his mouth.
