The common food pyramid implies that people should eat two to four
servings of fruit a day. While that may seem like a tall order to some,
it won’t stop stores and vendors from trying to keep their customers
healthy. Of course, one man decided to take that noble goal into his own
hands — and faced arrest because of it.
To be fair, Bradley
Reiter of Winter Haven, Florida, wasn’t exactly working with a clean
slate. In March 2014 he was contracted to harvest oranges and grapefruit
from the local groves, but he ended up taking it too far. He never paid
the grove owners for the fruit he harvested, and despite aims to sell
his bounty he didn’t have the license to do so legally. Even then, he
made off with a huge amount of fruit over time — roughly 50,000 boxes,
or a worth of $540,000.
Reiter might not have gotten far enough
in his plan to profit, but he did make it far enough to get in legal
trouble. In his quest to build a citrus stockpile, he ended up making
deals with three separate groves, forming his own company to distribute
the fruit, and most distressingly, he entered a grove in Bartow without
permission to steal their harvest. Given how far he went, it’s safe to
assume Reiter didn’t have the best of intentions — and now his arrest
has likely left him with a bitter taste in his mouth.
