BALTIC, S.D. (KELO) – Authorities are trying to figure out how a semi and trailer – loaded with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Amazon packages ended up in South Dakota.
According to court documents filed in Minnehaha County, the truck was supposed to go from Las Vegas to Waco, Texas but never arrived.
Early in the morning on June 24th, a Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Deputy pulled up behind a truck pulling a U-haul trailer at a gas station off of I-29 in Baltic. It turns out that the trailer was stolen and it quickly turned into a much bigger investigation.
“The individual that was driving that vehicle that had the stolen trailer, rented a few storage units in the area. He allowed us to search one of those storage units, and that’s when we noticed some Amazon boxes in the storage unit,” Captain Josh Phillips with the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office said.
That individual was 41-year-old Neil Erickson. According to court documents, the storage business’ surveillance video shows a blue semi pulling an Amazon trailer pulling into the driveway on June 3 at 12:28 a.m.
About six hours later, court documents say Erickson signed the lease for a second storage unit.
That same morning one of the businesses’ owners told investigators he saw Erickson inside the new unit with three to four other people.
The unit was full and Erickson did not want the co-owner to come inside.
According to court documents one of the storage units was 14 feet wide and 50 feet long. To get a better visual of what that looks like this hallway is about 50 feet long and about a third as wide. Authorities say that unit was almost full of unopened boxes from Amazon.
Inside they found 3,667 Amazon items worth $219,697.
Authorities are still trying to figure out how the items got near the Sioux Falls area, as Amazon says the items were heading nowhere near South Dakota.
“It left Las Vegas and never went got to Waco, Texas. We believe that trailer went immediately to the Sioux Falls area and eventually got unloaded into the storage unit,” Phillips said.
Authorities also say more arrests are possible.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years. That’s a high dollar amount. And so to recover a good portion of that was is was great. But still, we’re still looking to answer a lot of the other questions,” Phillips said.
Erickson is being charged with grand theft of over $100,000 on a $20,000 cash-only bond.
