Hub City businessman arrested after frying up fake-robbery at Wing Station
A Hattiesburg businessman is facing one felony charge — and possibly more — for cooking up an armed-robbery report that had Laurel police officers flying to Wing Station several nights ago, police say.
Ted Roberts, 44, was charged with false pretense and made his initial appearance in Laurel Municipal Court on Sunday before being released on $2,500 bond.
Roberts called 911 and reported that he was robbed at gunpoint outside the North Laurel business at 8:24 p.m. on Friday the 13th, Laurel police records show, and officers responded “running code,” LPD Chief Tommy Cox said.
But Roberts’ story about the robbery changed at least three times, Cox said, and through the investigation of Capt. Kevin Jackson, Roberts is facing a felony charge for falsely reporting the crime.
“It created an unnecessary rush and it created concern in the public, but it was completely fictitious,” Cox said.
But most concerning, he said, was the false identifiers Roberts gave police that could have led to a “guns-drawn encounter” with some unfortunate person in the area around that time who fit the description Roberts provided police.
“It could have been a very unfortunate situation for everyone involved,” Cox said. “We have enough real problems ... We don’t need to make stuff up. We’re going to continue working with the DA’s office to see if we can get additional charges.”
A story in the Jan. 16 Leader-Call referred to the reported robbery and a possible suspect being arrested by the Jones County Sheriff’s Department on another charge about an hour later. The man had a gun and bank bag matching the description the business owner provided, but he was soon ruled out as a suspect, Cox said. He didn’t comment on the case at the time.
“When it gets out in the media, it causes concern,” he said, but he could not tell a reporter about the suspicions about the businessman’s changing stories then. “It takes time to put these things together.”
He reportedly claimed that the money bag was taken outside the store at a location where the business’ surveillance cameras didn’t cover.
Jackson worked hard to poke holes in the man’s accounts of what took place, Cox said, and Roberts was eventually charged on Friday afternoon and booked into the Jones County Adult Detention Center. The false pretense charge came about because he was trying to convert the $10,000-plus he claimed was stolen for his own personal use, according to court records. There’s no indication that anyone other than Roberts was involved in the incident, Cox said.
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