A Douglas County jury has convicted a former Sam's Club employee on 11 felony counts after prosecutors said she used her position at the Douglasville store to open more than 100 unauthorized Sprint cellular accounts using fake identities and stolen personal details. Darlita Lynette McKeever worked at the Sam's Club on Concourse Parkway in Douglasville, where investigators say she exploited her access to customer information to run the scheme before stealing the cellphones tied to those accounts.
The jury returned its guilty verdict on August 28, convicting McKeever of five counts of theft by taking, four counts of identity fraud, and two counts of theft by deception, according to CBS Atlanta. The case was investigated jointly by the Douglasville Police Department and Walmart Global Investigations, the corporate asset protection and security unit of Sam's Club's parent company, as reported by Patch. Chief Superior Court Judge Cynthia Adams presided over the trial, though a sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.
A Case That Took Nearly Six Years to Resolve
McKeever was first arrested on September 24, 2020, meaning nearly six years passed between her initial arrest and her conviction, per the same Patch account. That kind of gap is not unusual in metro Atlanta, where court backlogs often stretch the time between criminal charges and trial resolution across multiple years.
Douglas County District Attorney Dalia Racine announced the verdict, saying it holds McKeever accountable for abusing her position and using other people's personal information for her own benefit. “Identity fraud is not a victimless crime,” Racine said, according to CBS Atlanta's report on the case.
What McKeever Could Face at Sentencing
McKeever's felony convictions carry significant statutory exposure once sentencing is scheduled. Under Georgia's identity fraud statute, O.C.G.A. § 16-9-126, a first-time conviction is punishable by one to 10 years in prison and fines up to $100,000 per count, according to Arora Law. Her theft by taking counts fall under O.C.G.A. § 16-8-12, which sets penalties of one to 10 years for stolen property valued over $1,500, rising to two to 20 years if the value exceeds $25,000, per Williamson Legal. It remains unclear whether any sentence handed down across the 11 counts would run concurrently or consecutively.
Georgia's Broader Identity Theft Problem
The Douglasville case lands amid a statewide pattern of identity theft complaints. Georgia ranked second nationwide per capita in identity theft reports in 2024, logging 55,955 such reports that year, according to Federal Trade Commission Consumer Sentinel data cited by Experian. Nationally, the FTC logged more than 1.3 million identity theft reports in 2025, with total reported fraud losses exceeding $15.8 billion, the same Experian analysis notes.
Racine urged residents who suspect unauthorized use of their personal details to report it to local police and set up a recovery plan through the FTC's IdentityTheft.gov portal, per CBS Atlanta's report. Hoodline has previously covered the same Douglasville Sam's Club location in connection with an unrelated road-rage incident, and has reported on other Douglas County prosecutions brought by Racine's office, including a wrongful conviction case and charges against a man dubbed the “West Georgia Monster.”
