Roland Camps attends a change-of-plea hearing in Lewis County Superior Court on Monday morning at the Lewis County Law and Justice Center in Chehalis.
The former United Parcel Service employee charged last December with multiple counts of felony theft and trafficking of stolen property after he admitted to stealing boxes of cellphones will spend the next five years in prison.
Roland E. Camps, 30, of Winlock, pleaded guilty as charged to nine counts of first-degree theft in addition to nine counts of first-degree trafficking of stolen property in early June. The same day he pleaded guilty, prosecutors charged a second man, William M. Eaton Jr., a 38-year-old Chehalis man, Camp’s former coworker at UPS.
Eaton faces the same 18 felony counts. Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer said the case against Eaton is still pending.
“I’m not a criminal,” Camps told the judge during his sentencing hearing Wednesday afternoon. “I’m just a guy who made a mistake.”
After Camps finished speaking, Lawler replied, “Clearly, this was a huge mistake.”
Camps faced between five and seven years in prison for the theft, and the 63-month sentence was an agreed recommendation between the prosecution and Camps’ defense attorney.
Camps was arrested in December for allegedly stealing boxes of cellphones that were en route via UPS from the distributor to Fred Meyer and GameStop. He then later resold the phones. Each box contained between five and 10 phones, and were valued between $5,490 and $6,490.
During the followup investigation into the UPS thefts, Camps told police that he and Eaton had worked together to steal boxes of cellphones, court documents state.
The restitution amount Camps will be ordered to repay will be determined at a later date.
