Man busted for ‘hoarding $31,000 worth of stolen meat’ in freezer stash

A man was found hoarding tens of thousands of dollars worth of frozen meat purchased with stolen credit cards.

Juan Yepez-Garcia, 51, was caught with several freezers at his home in Paradise, California, stocked with boxes filled with wholesale meat and seafood estimated to be worth $31,883.79, police said.

Photos from the scene showed large white freezer boxes filled with raw, frozen meat and white shrimp with labels from Sierra Meat and Seafood in Reno, Nevada. The freezer boxes were stacked inside a makeshift shed.

The Paradise Police Department on Friday began investigating a case involving stolen credit cards used to buy meat from the wholesaler. Officers traced the deliveries to Yepez-Garcia’s address on Joseph’s Court.

In an interview with police, Yepez-Garcia admitted that he believed the meat he accepted was probably stolen.

The reason he was storing the meat in bulk was not immediately known.

Yepez-Garcia has been arrested and charged with possession of stolen property. He is being held in Butte County Jail with his bail set at $15,000, according to court records.

The delivery driver who dropped the massive orders off at the home told officers he did know the purchases were fraudulent, and avoided charges.

Sierra Meat and Seafood is working to retrieve its product, KRCR reported.

Paradise is about 85 miles north of the state capital of Sacramento.

Yepez-Garcia was busted more than two years after a Florida man was discovered hoarding 10,000 empty cans of Coors Light beer, with some of the refilled with hundreds of gallons of urine.

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‘There’s cans in the walls, there’s holes in the sheet rock and in the sheet rock there’s cans. There’s cans in the cooker, and in the mattress and in the drawers and in the closet, in the toilet,’ said professional cleaner Tom DeSena.

‘Let’s just say, guessing, there’s 10,000 cans. That means that for every one can, there’s ten to 15 roaches. Probably ten million roaches in that house.’

The clean-up effort at the two-story home took four days and the cans filled almost four dumpsters.

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