A Sharp County man who is no stranger to the court system is behind bars after taking payment for items valued at over $3,000 but not delivering the items.
According to the affidavit filed June 3 in Sharp County, 38-year-old Tomas Wayne Ashcraft Jr., took payment from Johnson’s Hardware in Ash Flat in early February of this year in exchange for pallet boxes full of returned Home Depot merchandise.
Ashcraft provided an itemized list of the items which could be purchased and accepted payment for $3,465.50 which he cashed the same day.
After some time, the store management began attempting to contact Ashcraft about receiving the items they had purchased.
Ashcraft proceeded to give several different excuses on multiple occasions as to why the items had not been delivered and then just stopped taking calls altogether.
The manager of the store had stated not to worry about the items and to just return the money instead, but Ashcraft provided more excuses as to why he was unable to return the money or provide the merchandise.
After neither receiving the items nor a refund, charges were filed.
According to the affidavit, recent criminal history of Ashcraft shows this is not the first time he has used this same scam story of selling Home Depot merchandise as he was recently charged in Independence County for theft of property and commercial burglary.
Ashcraft has previously been found guilty of four or more felonies. Some of those include: failure to comply with sex offender reporting requirements in 2013; theft of property credit or debit card in 2014; falsifying business records in 2017 and multiple charges are pending for separate cases including, two counts of hot checks in 2021 and 2022; two counts of commercial burglary and two counts of theft of property in 2023 and most recently as a result of the February incident, theft of property and as a habitual offender.
Court for the 2023 incident in Sharp County is slated for July 16.
Court for the most recent charges has not yet been set.
Lauren is a an award-winning journalist who decided after 10 years of newspaper experience to venture out. Hallmark Times was born.
