KFC Coupon Caper: Man allegedly steals thousands of $5 gift checks

A former courier of a record storage company is in trouble after allegedly stealing boxes full of valuable gift checks from Kentucky Fried Chicken.

A routine audit back in January determined that someone made off with tens of thousands of dollars in customer gift checks belonging to KFC's corporate office.

After a lengthy investigation, police say the man responsible was the same man who was hired by the company to protect them; call it the KFC coupon caper.

12,800 five dollar gift certificates, all which could be converted to cash at any KFC, were swiped from a secured warehouse facility in southwest Louisville.

Shively Detective Josh Myers was assigned the case after auditors discovered that several boxes of the valuable gift checks were taken from Iron Mountain's locked down facility on 7th Street Road.

KFC officials also discovered that the checks were being cashed.

“We basically waited for one to get redeemed, then start tracking who redeemed it and how they got it,” said Myers.


Soon a pattern emerged which pointed police to Craig Bagby, who was a courier at Iron Mountain who was supposed to keep the gift checks safe.


Even though the theft was discovered back in January, Bagby was not immediately a suspect. In fact, he continued to work at Iron Mountain until he was arrested there Wednesday afternoon.

The $64,000 question from police was where did all of them go?

There were enough to allow anyone to eat like a king.

If someone had a $5 combo for each meal, there were enough gift cards for a single person to eat lunch and dinner at KFC 365 days a year for 17-and-a-half years.

But as finger licking good as the chicken was, police don't believe Bagby was putting it all away himself.

“I was able to track it to an individual who had bought them from Mr. Bagby and that's what led me to Mr. Bagby,” said Myers.

Source: WHAS-TV 11