A Marine eats a Meal, Ready to Eat during a field exercise at Combined Arms Training Center Camp Fuji, Japan, Dec. 11, 2025. A federal jury in Texas last week convicted a former soldier and Army contractor of stealing more than 200 pallets of MREs valued at about $1.1 million, the Justice Department said Tuesday. (Weston Brown/U.S. Marine Corps)
A federal jury in Texas convicted a former soldier and Army contractor of stealing more than 200 pallets of Meals, Ready to Eat from Fort Bliss as part of a plan to sell the stolen goods online, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Joseph Lavar Davis, 47, was found guilty in federal court in El Paso of one count of conspiracy to commit theft of government property and one count of theft of government property on June 24, court records show. The haul of MREs was valued at about $1.12 million, prosecutors say.
While serving on active duty in the Army, Davis held a position in food service supply and later held a similar position as a contractor, which he used to steal the MREs, according to Justice Department statement.
As part of the conspiracy, Davis created false requests for the MREs, negotiated sales prices for the stolen rations and coordinated their payment, the statement said.
“Joseph Davis betrayed the very country he once swore to protect in an effort to satisfy his own selfish ambition, and a jury of his peers held him accountable for it,” said Justin Simmons, the U.S. attorney for the western district of Texas.
Davis was indicted in February 2025 alongside three others, who prosecutors say worked together between February and August 2020 to obtain the pallets of MREs by submitting false paperwork, renting trucks, hauling the pallets away to a warehouse and selling them for their own gain.
Fort Bliss routinely uses the MREs to feed troops in Texas and New Mexico on mobilization or training orders who are assigned to the Fort Bliss Mobilization Brigade, the indictment said.
Units assigned to the brigade submit requests for MREs and send unit representatives to the brigade’s supply office to sign for them and pick them up, it said.
In August 2020, FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division agents executed a search warrant at a civilian warehouse in El Paso and found about 100 pallets, or about 57,600 of the shelf-stable meals, the statement said.
The warehouse owner purchased the pallets from the others, who had stolen them from Fort Bliss, it said. Others named in the indictment were Jatavis Lenard Fuse, Tyrone Lamar Odum Turner and John Broberg.
Fuse, a former soldier who was assigned to the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss from July 2014 to August 2020, pleaded guilty to both charges in February, court records show.
Turner, another former service member, pleaded guilty the same month to the conspiracy charge under a deal with prosecutors, the records show.
Broberg, the owner and operator of the warehouse, also pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge under a plea agreement in March.
According to the indictment, Broberg paid more than $44,000 over several transactions to Fuse or to bank accounts designated by Turner in exchange for the stolen MREs.
Those payments coincided with truck rentals by Davis and Fuse and with pickups of pallets from Fort Bliss in March and August 2020, prosecutors said.
On roughly the same dates, Fuse and Turner exchanged thousands of dollars with Davis, court records said.
Each 1,000-pound pallet contains 48 cases of the meals-in-a-bag designed to sustain service members in the field during training or military operations, according to the Defense Logistics Agency.
The pallets contain an even split of two different variants of MRE cases, “A” and “B.” Each case weighs 22 pounds and contains 12 different menus of the bagged entrees and other components, according to the DLA website.
It’s not unheard-of for base workers to be caught stealing MREs. In 2014, police in Seoul investigated a ring of contractors working on U.S. bases who picked up unused and expired MREs that had been thrown away or designated for burning and sold them on the black market.
During the war in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes found vendors in Kabul’s Bush Bazaar selling expired MREs and other items from U.S. outposts.
Davis is on pretrial release and is scheduled to be sentenced in October. The case was prosecuted as part of a task force chaired by Vice President JD Vance to root out fraud, waste and abuse in federal benefit programs, the DOJ statement said.
