VENANGO TWP — A hearing is pending for a suspected thief accused of stealing $20,000 worth of scrap metal from a home in this northern Butler County township.

Aaron M. Schwartz, 32, of Kennerdell, Venango County, allegedly made off with the scrap earlier this summer. State police last week charged him with a felony count of theft.

Schwartz is already awaiting trial in Venango County on three other scrapper-related cases there. He’s being held in the Venango County Jail on $75,000 bail.

State police in Butler believe the defendant between July 19 and Aug. 7 made repeated trips in a Chevrolet Tahoe to Charles Snyder’s property on East Unity Road in Venango Township.

Schwartz used a trailer, hitched to his sport utility vehicle, to haul away the scrap metal from Snyder’s rural property, according to court documents.

His plan to cash in on the alleged crime backfired, however, when Oil City police on Aug. 7 nabbed him at a city scrap yard where he had gone to sell Snyder’s property, police said.

He also was found with other scrap metal believed stolen in Venango County.

Oil City police arrested Schwartz on their own charges stemming from the case. He was placed in the Venango County Jail.

A month later, state police in Venango County charged him with two additional thefts in Rockland and Cranberry townships.

In his latest case in Butler County, Schwartz faces a preliminary hearing Jan. 14 at District Judge Lewis Stoughton’s office in Chicora.

Meanwhile, court records showed that at the time of his arrest, Schwartz was on probation for a 2010 burglary at a property in Shaler, Allegheny County.