The owner of a Gwinnett County cupcake bakery absolutely, positively made certain her customers got their deliveries; she shipped via Federal Express. The problem, police say, is that she used a Verizon Wireless billing number to do so, Channel 2 Action News reported.
Kimberly Elise Zanders, owner of Cupcake Utopian of Lawrenceville, posted $5,700 bond on a financial identity fraud charge and was released from the Gwinnett County Detention Center on Friday, according to jail records.
Channel 2 left a message on Zanders' voice mail and visited the woman’s home Monday but had not yet heard from her as of Monday evening.
Gwinnett County police said the investigation began when a Federal Express office in Tennessee intercepted what officials thought was a suspicious package, addressed to someone in Cordova, Tenn.
The package turned out to be a box of cake pops. It contained a flier for Cupcake Utopian. Its shipping label said the package had been sent by Verizon, the cell phone service.
"They contacted Verizon. Verizon Wireless verified that they never authorized a package to be shipped to the individual's address listed on the package," Detective Seth Bailey of the Gwinnett County Police Department told Channel 2.
When questioned, the 44-year-old Zanders admitted using Verizon’s billing number but didn’t think she was doing anything wrong because someone had given the account number to her, police said.
"Federal Express provided a list of shipments," Bailey said. "They were all to multiple addresses across the United States."
Verizon is working with FedEx to figure how much money was lost to the alleged scheme. It is believed to have been going on for at least six months.
Zanders, who has posted a YouTube video of her auditioning for the Food Network reality show, "Cupcake Wars," told police she formerly worked for Verizon, but Verizon told Channel 2 the woman never had any affiliation with the company.
According to the website for Cupcake Utopian, "a Specialty on line Cupcake Boutique," Zanders is a third-generation baker who was born and grew up in Mississippi "baking cakes, pies, breads and pastries with her mother and grandmother," and who founded her company in February 2011.
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