Shop Lifting Goes High Tech - Walmart 1.5million Bar Code Scam

[Brett_Tabke]

[eweek.com...]

Tennessee authorities have arrested two couples on charges that they used bogus bar codes to steal at least $1.5 million from hundreds of stores—some belonging to Wal-Mart—in 19 states. The group is slated to appear in court Wednesday.

Although the accused are said to have spent a lot of time and effort organizing colleagues in various parts of the country, the technology portion of their scheme was quite simple. They are accused of visiting a retailer and purchasing a low-priced item. The group would then scan the bar codes and simply print out duplicate bar codes, said Thomas Dean, the assistant Sumner County (Tennessee) district attorney who is assigned to the case.

[grandpa]

I'm curious about something... don't the bar codes contain more than pricing information, like say, a brief description also? Or at least the code would be tied to a database with a product description. The clerks at these stores ring these items every day, can they despise the job so much that they don't care. I suppose there is a case for that - low wages, on your feet all day, customers like me.

I don't condone theft, but you got to admit this was good while it lasted.

[Teknorat]

Bah- it's the equivelant of changing the price sticker. I did that when I was 10 or so.

[katana_one]

>>… don't the bar codes contain more than pricing information, like say, a brief description also? Or at least the code would be tied to a database with a product description. The clerks at these stores ring these items every day, can they despise the job so much that they don't care. I suppose there is a case for that - low wages, on your feet all day, customers like me.<<

I used to work at a retail chain about 10 years ago. My official title was Scanning Coordinator, and it was my job to make sure the bar codes on merchandise in my store matched the bar codes, descriptions and pricing in the company database (updated nightly from the home office). The bar codes themselves do not provide any information beyond serving as a unique identification number. However, as you suspect, this number is tied to a database containing all of the relevant data for the product.

The first problem is that in a busy retail store, a clerk will scan hundreds of items during a regular shift, and it can be fairly easy to overlook a discrepency, especially during busy hours. Another thing is that I bet these people were using bar codes from items that were likely to share common or innocuous descriptions but have two different prices - like same brand name, or similar product (ie: "blender"), or similar department (ie: "menswear"). As long as the store has an item which matches the bogus bar code in the database, the scam is pretty easy to pull off.

And then you do indeed have the clerks who just don't care. I worked with dozens of them. Could be why that local retail chain I worked for went belly up …

[bcolflesh]

The organization and dollar amount make it stand out, but this is an old scam... not to mention that many distributors purposely give items incorrect SKUs to "boost" sales of other items that aren't doing well or are being agressively marketed at the time - I laugh every time I look at album charts.

[twist]

I worked at a K-mart for four weeks once. It was a joke. Nobody in the store cared from the managers all the way down. When one of my managers found out I smoked she would call me on the PA like it was some type of emergency. She just liked having someone to talk to when she would sneak out for a smoke break.

In my second day there I saw three teenagers stealing cd's. I actually saw them putting them in their jackets. I told the guy training me. He said, "who cares" and went back to work. Everybody did the least amount they could do to. In my third week they promoted me to being in charge of the hunting and fishing department which paid nothing more. I had no idea what I was doing and a couple big guys came in wanting a hunting license of some sort. I called for the manager three times and waited fifteen minutes. I finally just gave them a couple of blank licenses and told them to do whatever they want with them. I saw the store manager later that day and told him what happened. He said, "good thing you didn't call me, I have no idea how to fill them out either."