A milk delivery driver was arrested on one count of felony theft for allegedly pocketing nearly $140,000 from deliveries made to the Union bookstore over the past two years. Otis Bowman, a 44-year-old delivery man for Foremost Dairy in Baton Rouge, reportadly stole $138,940.81 from milk deliveries made on campus between Jan. 9, 2004 and Sept. 29, 2006.
LSUPD arrested Bowman June 5, and he was released on bond June 6, from East Baton Rouge Parish Prison. According to LSUPD, Bowman crafted fraudulent receipts by using identical copies of receipt books from Foremost Dairy.
When making deliveries, he would give a Barnes and Noble employee the fraudulent receipt to sign with an inflated amount, charging the store for more milk than he was actually delivering, police said. He was paid in cash by the bookstore. At the end of every delivery route, Bowman would fill out an original Foremost receipt and turn in the cash for the actual amount of milk delivered pocketing the rest. According to LSUPD spokesman Maj. Lawrence Rabalais, the refrigerator at Barnes and Noble only held 36 gallons of milk.
The biggest fraudulent amount Bowman charged the bookstore in one day was 100 gallons. Ernest Winfrey, general manager of Foremost Dairy headquarters in Shreveport, said because Bowman turned in the proper documents with the correct amount of cash, Foremost had no way of knowing anything was wrong.
He refused to comment further on the actions surrounding Bowman’s termination. Rodney Myers, manager at Foremost Dairy in Baton Rouge, also refused to comment. Rabalais said a Barnes and Noble manager initially discovered the financial discrepancies.
He contacted his supervisor, the Barnes and Noble district manager, and they both met with Foremost officials to discuss the problem. Max Roberts, president of Barnes and Noble college bookstores, could not be reached for comment. Whit Green, assistant general manager of the LSU Bookstore, declined to comment. Bowman was fired from Foremost Dairy at approximately the same time LSUPD began their investigation on April 23, according to Rabalais.
Bowman later got a job at Albertsons grocery store on the corner of Foster and Government streets where he was working at the time of arrest. Albertsons refused to comment on the situation involving Bowman. LSUPD is uncertain what Bowman did with the money, which Rabalais said causes investigators to believe someone else is involved. LSUPD recovered some bank records, but “they yielded nothing of evidentiary value to where we can say that’s where he spent the extra money,” Rabalais said. “There is nothing physical that we saw- new car, three plasma screen televisions-there was nothing in the house we could link the money to.” Bowman was issued a subpoena from the district attorney’s office, and if he does not plead guilty, a trial will begin.
—Contact Stacy Coco at [email protected]