A Manchester man is in jail after an Eatonton woman went to police because she felt she’d been a victim of a pine straw scam.
The woman, who lives in a neighborhood off Godfrey Road, went to the Eatonton Police Department on Nov. 18 and spoke with Officer Blaze Waldroup.
According to Waldroup’s report of the incident, the woman said a man came to her house and knocked on her door, and offered to lay pine straw in her yard for $4 per bale, and said he had 25 bales. She agreed to have the job done. When the man, later identified as Kishawnie “Shawn” Carter, finished the job, he told her he had actually used 34 bales of pine straw. But the invoice he wrote out had a zero attached to that total, and she was billed for 340 bales of pine straw. The woman paid the bill through a digital app.
The next day, Carter returned to her house to finish putting pine straw in the backyard. He then presented the woman with another invoice, this one for 750 bales of pine straw at $4 each. The woman again paid it through a digital app, but because that day’s bill totaled $3,000, she had to split her payment into two payments over two days.
Carter returned again the next day to lay more pine straw, this time with another man, who he said was his brother. At the end of the day, he gave the woman an invoice for 150 bales of pine straw at $4 each. She again paid the $600 via the payment app, and thought all was complete.
But a week later, Carter contacted her and said he’d “been doing inventory of his pine straw,” and told her she owed him another $600.
“At that time, [she] stated something felt off, and she came to [file a report],” Waldroup wrote in his report. “[She] stated that she was happy with the work that had been done, but it did not appear there were over 1,000 bales used in the project in her yard.”
Per the invoices, the woman brought in 1,240 bales of pine straw, which were used in her yard, and the payment amounts totaled $4,960.
Kishawnie Hynik Carter, 25, is in Putnam County jail facing one count of felony theft by deception. Bond was set at $5,000, but had not been posted at the newspaper’s press time.