‘I’m not a thief’: Viral video shows Belleville man not scanning items at Walmart; he says he was doing his job

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - Social media can be a wonderful place to connect with people, learn, and see new things. But for one Belleville man, it has been a nightmare for the last week.

A viral video shows what looks like him stealing from Walmart. He says he was just doing his legal job. The video shows a man taking items from his cart and placing them directly into bags.

“This man is really just stealing everything,” said a woman in the video. “So open about it, look at the screen, ain’t nothing ringing up.”

The video is making its way across the world through social media, but the man in the video says it’s not what it appears to be.

“I’m not a thief. I’m being pictured and painted as a thief on the internet,” said Bill Astle.

Astle is the man in the video, sporting the same Battlehawks shirt that he wore on Mother’s Day, the day he says it was taken.

He works for Spark, Walmart’s delivery service. When shopping, he said he scans the items from his phone as he grabs them.

“Everything is done off the phone, so when we get to the register, we’re not actually scanning a single item,” said Astle.

He says when they get to the register, they just need to scan their phone into the self-checkout and then bag the items. And yet when he did this last month, he was unwittingly being filmed.

“Millions and millions of views,” said Astle.

The video is on every social media platform, from TikTok to Instagram to YouTube to Twitter/X, which says it’s been viewed 16 million times on that platform alone. It’s led to people calling him a thief online, even reaching out to the Battlehawks saying, “Please control your fans,” and others saying, “Kaw isn’t the law for him?”

“I’ve had customers say, ‘Hey, didn’t I see you on the internet? Didn’t you steal items?’ And then I have to explain to people what I’m doing,” said Astle.

Astle even has receipts that show he was working in Walmart that day and is now trying to clear his name and get his life back to normal.

“Ideally trying to find a way to get them pulled down,” said Astle.

He also says there was one item he did pay for that day: the flowers he was buying for his wife for Mother’s Day. But the video ended before that purchase.

“They would have seen when I got done with the Spark delivery order, I scanned two dozen roses and used my debit card to pay for the two dozen roses,” said Astle.

Astle reiterated to not post videos on social media of strangers, especially if you’re not certain of what’s going on.

We also reached out to Belleville police to see if anybody contacted them about the story and have not heard back.

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