By Sherry Youngquist
JOURNAL REPORTER
The N.C. Attorney General’s Office will take over the case against eight former employees of Bassett Furniture Industries Inc. who are charged in a scheme that diverted more than $2 million worth of furniture from a plant near Mount Airy.
Yesterday, the attorney general’s office agreed to take on the prosecution of the former employees. In the course of seven years, authorities say, the employees managed to steal enough wooden tables, wardrobes and bedroom furniture to fill seven tractor-trailers. All have been fired.
The plant has since closed.
“The district attorney will be sending over all the information in the case,” said Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Justice. “A special prosecution section of the attorney general’s office will be assigned.”
Ricky Bowman, the Surry County district attorney, did not return a phone call to his office yesterday.
Authorities who helped investigate the thefts said that the county turned over prosecution to the state because of the amount of time the case would take.
“I think this is going to be such an involved trial and so much of it is a paper trail. Our DA’s office is limited. They’ve got so many cases to try in Surry and Stokes counties…. It benefits everybody if they have an outside prosecutor who can commit full time to that,” said Capt. Graham Atkinson, the head of detectives for the Surry County Sheriff’s Office.
The former employees came under investigation in April 2012 after an anonymous caller tipped off the furniture company’s headquarters in Bassett, Va. Soon after, the employees were fired for gross misconduct. Many of them had worked at Bassett for more than 20 years and were among the plant’s top-paid employees.
Each was charged on Nov. 14, 2012, with seven felony counts of conspiracy to commit embezzlement in excess of $100,000.
They are John Ronald Jarrett, a former plant manager; Lisa Marie Galyean Martin, a former safety director and shipping supervisor; Michael Wayne Pennington, a former assistant superintendent; David Ray Slate, a former plant controller; Randall Alex Lawless, a former production manager; Jerry Conrad Tolbert, a former maintenance supervisor; Gary Van Moser, a former receiving supervisor; and Michael Gray Slate, a former supervisor of configured tables and import line.
Authorities say that the thefts happened over about seven years. Often, only one or two pieces at a time left the plant on Sheep Farm Road just outside of Mount Airy. The finished furniture pieces never showed up on an inventory, but the supplies, labor and other items that went into them did – leaving a paper trail to follow.
Within hours of beginning a criminal investigation, the sheriff’s office and agents with the State Bureau of Investigation recovered more than 80 pieces of furniture. Most of it was in the homes of the employees involved or in their relatives’ homes.
The vast majority of the stolen furniture was sold, authorities said.
More than 300 pieces of furniture were eventually recovered.
The plant closed last November, putting about 300 people out of work. Company officials said that the decision to close was not based on the thefts or the criminal investigation.
• Sherry Youngquist can be reached in Mount Airy at 336-789-9338 or at syoungquist@wsjournal.com.
