A Fertigator employee has been arrested in the theft of $31,286 from the local lawn care company.
The missing money was reported Feb. 14 to the Lady Lake Police Department. A subsequent investigation found that from June to August last year, 41-year-old Sean Michael Travers, of Rockledge, wrote checks to his own nursery, Wrights Nursery. But instead of obtaining plants from his nursery, Travers went to Zephyr Nursery in Fruitland Park and paid cash for plants. While the checks Travers wrote to his own nursery were in the $10,000 range, he never paid more than $1,000 cash for the plants purchased with cash at Zephyr Nursery. Travers told Zephyr Nursery that Fertigator was under investigation by the IRS, which is why cash payment was required. There was no IRS investigation, according to an arrest report from the Lady Lake Police Report.
Wrights Nursery was actually located at Travers’ Rockledege home in a residential area. It was not in an area zoned for business and there was no evidence of a nursery.
The New York native was arrested Wednesday morning on a charge of grand theft and booked at the Lake County Jail.
In 2012, Travers had been sentenced to one year and six months in prison after he was convicted in Marion County on charges of grand theft, trafficking in stolen property and providing false information to a pawn broker. He is on felony probation through 2023.
