Two North Carolina men, both reportedly Duke Energy employees, are now facing serious felony charges after authorities say they pulled off an electricity theft scheme worth close to $600,000 right next door to one of NASCAR’s most famous venues. The alleged operation ran out of a Duke Energy substation just outside Charlotte Motor Speedway, and the numbers involved are not the kind of figures usually attached to garden-variety power theft.
Here’s the part that matters. Investigators say the power was not stolen for a single home or a small business. According to the warrants, the electricity was funneled to Ver-El RV Park, a campground sitting directly across from the speedway. That detail changes the scale of the whole thing, because campgrounds and RV parks near major race tracks draw heavy crowds during event weekends, and that means heavy electrical demand.
Who’s accused and what they’re charged with
The two men named in the warrants are 55-year-old Michael Keith Kluttz and 65-year-old Edward Jerome Little. Both reportedly worked for Duke Energy, which is what makes the accusations land differently than your average theft case. These are not outsiders sneaking into a fenced-off substation in the dark. The warrants allege they used their positions to obtain unauthorized power, which suggests inside access rather than a break-in.
The dollar figure attached to the alleged theft is what really stands out. Authorities estimate the stolen electricity was worth roughly $591,000. That’s not a rounding error on a utility bill. That’s a number large enough to trigger some of the heaviest theft and fraud charges on the books in North Carolina.
Both men were charged with injuring an energy facility, obtaining property by false pretense greater than $100,000, and money laundering greater than $100,000. The money laundering charge is the one worth paying attention to, because it signals that investigators believe this wasn’t just about using free power. It points to an effort to move or disguise the financial benefit of what was taken.
The charge nobody expected
And that’s where it gets complicated. Little is facing two additional counts that have nothing to do with electricity at all. He was charged with two counts of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. According to the warrant, those charges stem from a fully automatic gun.
That’s a sharp turn for a case that started as a power theft investigation. A fully automatic firearm carries significant legal weight on its own, and stacking those counts on top of the fraud and money laundering charges means Little is looking at a far more complicated road through the court system than his co-defendant.
The arrests
Records show both men were arrested Thursday. They were booked into the Cabarrus County jail and were scheduled to appear in court Friday. That fast turnaround suggests authorities felt they had a solid case ready to put in front of a judge.
Why this matters beyond one RV park
This is where the story turns from a local crime blotter item into something bigger. When utility employees are accused of stealing from the very company they work for, it raises uncomfortable questions about oversight at energy facilities. Substations are supposed to be among the more secured pieces of infrastructure out there, and the idea that nearly $591,000 in power could allegedly be diverted without immediate detection is the kind of thing that should concern anyone who pays an electric bill.
There’s also the matter of who absorbs that cost. Utility losses don’t simply vanish. When power goes missing on this scale, the financial impact tends to ripple outward, and it’s rarely the people responsible who feel it first. Customers and the broader system tend to carry the weight of large-scale theft, which is exactly why charges like obtaining property by false pretense and money laundering exist for cases that cross six figures.
The location adds another layer. Charlotte Motor Speedway is a cornerstone of the racing world, and the businesses surrounding it thrive on the traffic that NASCAR weekends bring. An RV park across the street from that track is positioned to benefit directly from race-day crowds. If the allegations hold up, the case becomes a story about someone trying to power a profit-driven operation on stolen electricity, in the shadow of one of the most recognizable tracks in the sport.
The bottom line
The accusations here are still allegations, and both men will have their day in court. But the framing is hard to ignore. Two insiders, a massive dollar figure, a campground feeding off a legendary race track, and a weapons charge that came out of nowhere. If prosecutors can back up what the warrants claim, this won’t be remembered as a simple case of someone skimming a little free power. It’ll be remembered as a reminder that the biggest threats to a system are sometimes the people trusted to run it.
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Images Via: CONCORD Sheriffs Office
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