It's Amazing What People Do When They Steal

A friend of mine is a loss prevention agent for a major retailer in the U.S., I'll not say which one and it's not Big Blue or Bulls Eye. You know who they are. Back to my story. He was telling me about an investigation into a high end merchandise scheme where the thieves would put bar codes they printed onto merchandise and buy it, remove the bar code and return the items with a store receipt for the real price and get paid for returning the items to the store. Pretty slick they thought, until they forgot to remove a bar code sticker on a TV. The scale of this was so huge that the FBI and Treasury Dept were brought in because of the credit cards, dollar amounts, and interstate dealings within the scheme. To make a long story shorter their house was raided by the above agencies as well as local police and store security management. They found several personal computers, receipt printer, specialty paper and sticker stock, specialty printer ribbons(multi-color) and thousands of dollars worth of merchandise in several full rooms in the house. The printers even had freshly printed multi-color receipts still on the printer and stacked up, others were attached to boxes waiting to be returned for cash or credit card credits. How were the stores going to catch on to the fake receipts when they give them right back after making a return note on the original. Returns procedures made a big change after this came out but the smart mousetrap always seems to morph the smarter mouse and on and on. In the end it was pure greed that always makes the difference. They never would have been caught without it.