A Chick-fil-A in Alabama counted a major children’s hospital and a Power Five athletic conference among its customers, raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in catering orders over a two-year span, according to federal court filings.
But the money didn’t go to the franchise, prosecutors said. Instead, it was rerouted to the personal bank accounts of two Chick-fil-A employees.
Now the pair face decades in prison on conspiracy charges.
Larry James Black Jr., the former director of hospitality at a Chick-fil-A in the Five Points neighborhood of Birmingham,
pleaded guilty to his role in the alleged scheme on Tuesday. His partner, 40-year-old Joshua Daniel Powell, pleaded guilty over the summer.
Powell was the manager at the Five Points Chick-fil-A.
Defense attorneys appointed to represent Black and Powell did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment Wednesday.
According to prosecutors in the Northern District of Alabama, Black and Powell diverted $492,000 in customer payments between April 2018 and January 2020.
“Many of these payments were for catering orders from large customers like Children’s of Alabama, Shipt, the Southeastern Conference and the University of Alabama at Birmingham,” prosecutors said in Black’s plea agreement.
Children’s of Alabama is a children’s hospital associated with the university. Shipt is a delivery service owned by Target, and the Southeastern Conference is one of the Power Five athletic conferences in college football.
Prosecutors said the scheme unfolded in two parts.
The first involved a fake Yahoo email address and two fraudulent digital payment accounts through Square Inc. According to court filings, all three were designed to look like they belonged to the Chick-fil-A franchise.
In reality, prosecutors said, the digital payment accounts linked back to the personal bank accounts of Black and Powell.
The pair is accused of diverting about $170,000 in customer payments using the cover accounts.
“Black used the fraud proceeds to support his lifestyle, including the purchase of high-end luxury vehicles and vacations,” prosecutors said.
The second part involved Powell’s personal email address. According to court documents, he used the email to intercept $320,000 in credit card payments from a single customer — Aramark Food and Support Services Group.
Aramark is the food service provider for Children’s of Alabama, prosecutors said.
Some of the intercepted funds ended up in Powell’s personal bank account, court documents state, and another small subset was transferred to Black.
Black is additionally accused of using fake social security numbers to open bank accounts and lying on a mortgage application by overstating his earnings at Chick-fil-A by 200%.
A grand jury indicted Black and Powell in April, court filings show.
Powell pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud in June, and Black pleaded guilty on Tuesday to one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud and one count of bank fraud.
They face up to 20 years in prison on the conspiracy charges, prosecutors said. Black faces an additional 30 years on the bank fraud charge.
Chick-fil-A workers stole nearly half a million dollars in customer payments, feds say
In the 80's, two gay dudes pulled the same stunt in what's the german equivalent of Macys. But they stole millions, then fled to Brazil when they were about to be discovered. They lived it up in Rio for a while, then one of them got bored, flew home and got arrested. The other fled to Uruguay, where a private detective found him, drugged him and kidnapped him back to Germany. The funny thing is, he said he did it because his superviser called him stupid when he told him there was a security issue with payments 
..... all day.
