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Thurs.: Man accused of stealing from Brinks Company

ASHTABULA TOWNSHIP – A man who has previous convictions in Trumbull County was accused of stealing a large amount of money from the Brinks Company that was accidentally delivered to his Ashtabula County business.

Rebel Dean Chance Mead, 26, of Linesville, Pennsylvania, was indicted on two charges of grand theft, both fourth degree felonies. Mead, who is the vice president of Kanect Recycling, 5700 W. 58th St., Ashtabula Township, is accused of stealing $100,000 that was accidentally delivered to the recycling company by the Brinks Company in May.

County Prosecutor Nicholas Iarocci said an employee of the Brinks Company made a mistake during money packaging that led to an extra $100,000 being included in a delivery to Kanect Recycling. The Brinks Company has an elaborate video surveillance system when packaging money and it showed one of their employees making a mistake during the packaging process, Iarocci said.

Once the error was discovered, Mead was contacted and he denied receiving the money, Iarocci said. From that point, Mead stopped communicating with the Sheriff’s office, Iarocci said.

“He personally signed for this,” Iarocci said of Mead. “Records show he personally received the money.”

Mead’s attorney, Robert Rohrbaugh II, said his client will plead not guilty at the arraignment and he will continue to deny any wrongdoing.

“Brinks made a delivery to my client, as they regularly do during the course of his business,” Rohrbaugh said. “The delivery was placed in office safekeeping and any alleged overpayment would have been an error or oversight that we weren’t aware of until about a month later.”

When Brinks noticed the error, Rohrbaugh said the company offered to allow Brinks to engage an independent accountant to go through the books.

“That kind of money is going to show up somewhere and it didn’t show in our books,” Rohrbaugh said. “We offered that and no one took us up on our offer. We will continue to deny these cha rges and defend them vehemently.”

Mead has convictions in 2016 and 2017, respectively, on counts of scrap metal records violation in Ashtabula and Trumbull counties.

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