Police: Schuylkill County Man Wore a Wig to Steal Aluminum from Former Employer

A Schuylkill County man was arraigned Friday on charges he stole aluminum from a former employer and sold the metal for scrap.

According to court documents obtained by The Canary, Dennis Bugden, 48, of Shenandoah, was arraigned Friday before District Magistrate Edward Tarantelli on felony charges of burglary and criminal trespass and a misdemeanor for theft.

Unsecured bail was set at $20,000.

Police say that Bugden is a former employee at Jeld-Wen, a windows manufacturer in Ringtown. And at about 4:30 a.m. on May 4, Bugden is alleged to have shown up at the company’s facility and entered through a shipping dock door.

Once inside the building, Bugden is accused of stealing several bundles of aluminum extrusion, a product that Jeld-Wen has specifically made for its windows manufacturing process.

Video surveillance shows Bugden taking the aluminum from the facility and placing them in a Chevy Malibu that’s owned by his girlfriend. He then leaves Jeld-Wen that night 20 minutes later.

Police say that Bugden was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and an Under Armour T-shirt with a red flag on the back of it. Inside the facility, Bugden apparently tried to conceal his identity by donning a curly-haired wig.

The wig mustn’t have worked because the company identified him through its video surveillance.

Later on the morning of May 4, Bugden reportedly turned up at SOS Metals, Mt. Carmel Township, Northumberland County. Police say video surveillance from the metals recycler shows Bugden wearing the same clothes, without the wig.

While at SOS Metals, Bugden allegedly scrapped 353 pounds of aluminum extrusion and was paid $211.80 for it.

Jeld-Wen reps told police that this has been an ongoing issue at the Ringtown facility, dating back to July 2023.

Police say that Jeld-Wen employees have noticed missing aluminum most recently in March and April 2024. They told police that they’d cut parts on Friday, staging them for production on Monday.

But when they showed up for work on Monday, the aluminum was gone.

One employee told police that he had photos of a Chevy Malibu parked at a loading dock during non-production hours on Saturday, March 9 of this year.

Employees at SOS Metals told police that Bugden is a regular customer there and would typically show up on Saturday mornings, just after they opened, with aluminum extrusion to recycle.

Bugden is due back in Tarantelli’s court on July 17 for a Preliminary Hearing.