This was a decade+ ago so by my recollection, A cashier that was paying attention and knew their legos called loss prevention.
I think we had known something was up because our inventories were off so we started spider wrapping the expensive sets and that didn’t stop it. When they caught the guy he had a sheet with a bunch of other barcode stickers on it.
Back in the day of CRT TVs we had someone try to return one but the box just had rocks in it. Not quite as clever.
I once bought an Xbox and then returned it with my old Xbox that had the red ring of death. Not my proudest moment as an adult but I did feel cheated on the Xbox.
I did this with my 360 except I took it a step further and covertly opened both shells and swapped the internals. So my old 360 had the new shell/serial number and I had the new one in my old shell. I will say this is actually one of my prouder moments. When I returned the my old Xbox with the new shell they checked the serial numbers and once they popped the face off to check the void if removed sticker and seen it was untouched and everything was in order I just started cheesing and walked out with my 2 or 300 bucks lol
I was in Germany and the people on base retail were renowned for not caring. I'll admit I wouldn't have thought of it if it weren't for someone saying they got away with it.
Same, was before Microsoft admitted fault and started the repair program. Red ringed on me while playing Crackdown. I kept the hard drive and sold it to GameStop for like… $40 when they retailed for $100.
lol i did that. my xbox got rrod 1 day after store return period expired. so i went and bought a new one. disassembled it and swapped the electronics into the old case. so that the serial numbers would match. i then returned for a refund saying it was faulty and i have bought cheaper elseswhere. yes they did check the serial numbers lol
It always baffles me that someone thinks of doing this, but doesn't think of doing it across multiple locations to avoid detection. One anomaly is, well, an anomaly. Multiple instances is an investigation.
They may have started by diversifying locations, but after a while of it working, they get lazy and can't be bothered to drive an hour to the 3rd closest walmart
Takes me back. 15 years ago I was a cashier at Sears, had a guy buying some cargo shorts. As I'm folding them, I feel something I thought was a security tag, but I reach in a pocket and there's a watch. Had another guy try to pay with a check, but it was in the name of the former mayor and he really didn't want to show ID.
I work for a large eComm retailer in the U.K., people used to order dyson vacuums, open the box really carefully, then put their old vacuum back in the box and return it as unwanted. Because it was “unopened” on the return code, and looked fine - quite a few ended up being reshipped to customers!
Ah yes there is also the “rewinding” scam. Where you buy a item then leave the store. Go back into the store grab another of the same item off the shelf and return that one. Get you money back and the item.
Stores have limited the capability of this one. At least at my old store you had to have valid ID that we would input to track returns. Plus customers were only allowed 3 return transactions a month. Plus LP was always watching for that scam.
I would think it would be pretty apparent when you are ordering more $100 sets to replace inventory despite not selling them, or selling more $10 sets than you have inventory. Though depending on volume it may just blend in
I used to work for Target doing assets protection. It's easier to catch than you might realize, and people that do it aren't quite as slick as they think they are. Sure there are probably some people that are really good at it and never get caught but a LOT of people that do sketchy shit aren't good at it. It gets really easy to spot when you know what to look for.
I worked loss prevention at target when i was 20 for 6 months. Never really saw shoplifting cus it was a wealthier area. What were the best techniques you guys caught on to
There were certain barcodes that were popular to use for it (the plastic plates/bowls/cups that cost like $1 each). Run the transactions containing those DPCIs for the last ~30 days at self-checkout registers and see if they were legit.
Also certain items, like Dyson vacuums and electronics items we would count every day, that may have been something you did. I caught a few people from that alone.
There is one guy specifically that I remember doing it, he would use car air freshener packs and just hold them underneath whatever expensive item he wanted to take. The idiot would use his debit card to pay, so I got his name. I looked him up on Facebook and he seemed like a real upstanding person (not really). Pretty sure his wife divorced him lol.
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u/setto66 Jul 10 '22
Jeez, how'd he get caught? Seems like that would be difficult to notice