Plan goes sour: Man arrested in tangerine thefts

An 81-year-old man allegedly stole 11 truckloads of tangerines Tuesday from a Lake Wales farm and sold them at a market for more than $300, according to Polk County deputy sheriffs.

Herman Southall got away with it, they said.

Then he went back to the same farm on Lake JL Massey and Big Tank roads the next day and stole at least 2,000 more tangerines, deputies said.

But this time he wasn't so lucky.

Southall and another man were found at the farm by the Polk County Sheriff's Office aviation unit and arrested, according to deputies. Deputies also said they "stopped counting" after they hit 2,000.

Southall told deputies he had "talked to someone several years ago" about picking fruit at the farm but did not have any contact information. He also was using fake paperwork to try to show he bought the fruit, deputies said.

He was taken to the Polk County Jail and given a $8,500 bond on charges of grand theft of more than 2,000 pieces of citrus and trespassing.