Woman faces charges for clippers thefts

Employee, family would sell directly to salons

A Sturtevant company that makes professional barber supplies was getting clipped for years by a longtime employee and her relatives who have all admitted to stealing and selling its products directly to a handful of salons in the South.

Bettye R. Kidd, 56, of Racine, her son Franklin D. Allen, 37, of Mississippi, and her niece, Tracie Edmonson, 49, of Racine, all have agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges in federal court. No date had been set as of Friday for formally entering the pleas and sentencing.

According to the documents, Kidd worked as the lead materials handler at Andis Company. Allen solicited sales from the various southern shops, explaining that he could sell the equipment so cheap because of an employee discount.

In the beginning, the shop owners told investigators, Allen would deliver the products himself, but later the clippers, trimmers and blades would come directly from Andis, where Kidd would steal them and put them in boxes with falsified shipping labels.

For a while, Edmonson took orders from someone in Louisville, Miss., and accepted payments via cash, cashiers checks and money orders for 173 shipments from 2012 to 2015. In October 2015, Kidd told Edmonson the company had changed its shipping process and the scheme would no longer work.

Edmonson’s involvement stopped at that point, though Kidd continued to have stolen products shipped until January when company officials discovered the thefts. Company surveillance video showed Kidd preparing the unauthorized shipping label found on a box awaiting UPS pickup. Confronted by the company, Kidd admitted she was selling stolen clippers.

UPS records showed that from September 2012 to January, more than 1,400 packages were shipped from Andis Company to shops like Rod’s Beauty in Desoto, Texas, Furious Styles in Sandy Springs, Ga., and Barber & Beauty in Hattiesburg, Miss., none of which were official customers of Andis.

The thefts also cost Andis more than $12,000 in shipping costs.

Andis, a family-held company with about 600 employees, has been manufacturing in Racine County since 1922, according to the company website, and sells its products around the world.

Bob Gleason, vice president of human resources for Andis, said Kidd and Edmonson each had worked at the company more than 20 years, and their crimes shocked and saddened the company.

Gleason said the company has enhanced its security, “and hope this never happens again.”