A Reading man is accused of stealing nearly $375,000 worth of Apple products while employed as a picker at the Amazon distribution center near Shartlesville.
State police at Hamburg last week charged Warlyn Estevez, 23, with a dozen felony counts of theft by unlawful taking. They said Estevez, while employed at the Upper Bern Township facility under an alias last December, stole tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of Apple Watches, AirPods, hard drives and other small, high-value merchandise.
Estevez of the 500 block of Cedar Street was free to await a hearing following arraignment Tuesday night before District Judge Andrea J. Book in Reading Central Court.
According to the probable cause affidavit:
The investigation began Dec. 20, 2024, when Trooper Phillip Dohner of the criminal investigation section was contacted by an Amazon loss-prevention officer. The officer told Dohner that she was investigating thefts of high-value items at the Amazon RDG1 Fulfillment Center on Mountain Road.
The trooper met with the officer, who provided him with a thumb drive containing surveillance video of the thefts from the high–retail-value section between Dec. 1 and 13, 2024. The employee suspected of the thefts was identified by the badge he used to sign in and out.
The suspect is seen removing small white boxes consistent with Apple products and placing the items in a bin in his cart.
That employee had no business being in the high-value merchandise section at the times he was seen putting the items in his cart.
Officials tallied the total loss at $372,934. That included eight days on which more than $10,000 worth of merchandise was stolen and four days on which more than $40,000 in items were taken.
Based on the video footage and Amazon’s identification of the suspect employee, state police charged the man whose name, they later learned, Estevez had used as an alias.
This was not discovered until nearly a year later, just before the scheduled preliminary hearing before Book on Nov. 12. The man’s attorney informed Dohner that his client had never worked at Amazon.
The trooper insisted they had the right man, showing the lawyer documentation affirming his employment.
But when the man walked into the courtroom, the Amazon loss-prevention officer realized they had the wrong person. She told Dohner that the man was not the employee who had stolen the merchandise.
Based on those developments, prosecutors withdrew the charges.
About three hours later, another Amazon loss-prevention officer emailed the trooper with new information. Using its own resources, Amazon believed it had discovered the true identity of the suspect: Warlyn Estevez, who had previously worked at the Bethel facility before he was fired in July 2024 for theft.
Estevez, using an alias, began working at the Shartlesville warehouse four months later, in November 2024.
In a photo lineup, Estevez was positively identified as the man who stole the items from Dec. 1 through Dec. 13, 2024.
