Six Men Plot Home Invasion/Extortion Attempt in Jail Cell

Osman White

We never heard any reports by any media outlet of a home invasion and extortion attempt by six Charlotte men in May-- who happened to hatch the plot of in the Mecklenburg County Jail.  According to a Charlotte Observer article, it happened!

Roderick Hardin, Tim Donahue, Leo McIntyre, Otis Sutton, and brothers Abdul and Osman White are charged with robbing a business that engages in interstate commerce, which is a federal crime. 

According to court documents, Osman White came up with the plan to rob the owner of the car dealership/junkyard, who was believed to have $1 Million in a safe inside his house.  White shared his plan with McIntyre and Hardin, while the men were housed in pod 3700 in Mecklenburg's uptown jail in May. 

The target of the plot owns a junkyard and also sells used vehicles and parts, and he buys and receives vehicles from auctions across the Southeast. The business also ships car parts throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, according to an affidavit sworn Tuesday by Rodney Blacknall, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. The owner, who wasn't named in court documents, lived in a home located on the same property. He told investigators that he'd been storing money from his business in a safe in his home for years. 

On July 21, the target and his children were inside the home in Mooresville. A car pulled into the driveway, and two men - later identified as Hardin and Sutton - asked about buying one of the cars for sale at the edge of the property. As the men were talking to the victim, court documents say, two of the other suspects pulled out a shotgun, demanding money from the victim and ordering the family into the home. 

Once the family was inside the home, one of the suspects demanded that the victim give him money from a safe inside the home, according to the documents. The suspect told the victim that he would shoot the children if he did not get the money. The victim led the man with the gun to a safe in the home, authorities said, while another suspect used rope to tie up the children and another adult in the house. 

But court papers say the plan began to unravel a few days after the robbery, when a confidential informant contacted law enforcement.  The confidential informant said one of the suspects told him about the robbery and how they had "gotten so much money that he had to rent a storage unit" off Monroe Road to store it all. Law enforcement agents confirmed that Hardin had rented the site using his passport as identification. Agents arrested Hardin when he arrived at the storage unit, seizing $5,000 from him and more than $550,000 from inside the unit.