Bar code "discounts"

[<rms () bsf-llc com>]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116174264881702894.html?mod=technology_featu
red_stories_hs
 
As Shoplifters Use High-Tech Scams, Retail Losses Rise 
 

Bar-Code Scam

Over six months in 2004, Thomas Westwood, his wife, Jennifer, and
mother-in-law, Kathleen Dodson, worked the bar-code scam at Target stores.
Using a computer, they scanned bar codes from relatively inexpensive Target
items and printed out copies. Then they returned to the store and pasted the
fakes onto expensive Dyson vacuum cleaners, DVD players and phones. Cashiers
dutifully rang up the wrong prices.

All told, the trio stole more than $100,000 of merchandise, law-enforcement
officials say. After a cashier in one store noticed a mispriced item, Target
investigators got involved and discovered a pattern of such mispricings.
Using video clips, they identified suspects, and the police moved in.
Earlier this year, the trio pleaded guilty in a Missouri federal court to
conspiracy to commit fraud.

Last December, a Target security guard nabbed a Colorado college student
after he purchased a $150 iPod that carried a bar code for $4.99 headphones,
according to Mr. Brekke. The thief had fashioned the fake label with a $25
software program called Barcode Magic, which he'd downloaded from the
Internet, Mr. Brekke says.

Bar-code swindlers are hard to catch, says Mr. Brekke, a former agent with
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If an alert cashier points out that a
bar code is ringing up the wrong price, the thief can either pay the
difference or just say he doesn't want the item any more and walk out. "The
risk level is very low," he says.

Mr. Brekke has been trying to persuade manufacturers to print prices on
boxes or come up with bar codes in assorted sizes, which would be trickier
to substitute. In the meantime, Target's loss investigators have begun to
monitor sales reports for unusual patterns, trends and anomalies.

In the summer of 2005, they noticed spikes in sales of Legos. Expensive sets
were being sold for a pittance. They studied hundreds of hours of
surveillance tape, then devised an electronic system to alert in-store
antitheft workers when big batches of Legos were rung up.

That's what happened last Nov. 17 at a Target in Hillsboro, Ore., but the
security guard got the message too late. Mr. Swanberg had already made his
fraudulent purchase and left, according to Mr. Lesowski, the prosecutor. The
guard warned co-workers at nearby stores.

Later that day, an employee at a Beaverton, Ore., Target spotted Mr.
Swanberg loading his cart with about 10 $100 Star Wars Millennium Falcon
Lego sets. He slapped a phony bar code for a $19 Lego set on the top box and
headed for the youngest looking cashier he could find, the prosecutor says.
The cashier scanned the top box and multiplied it by the number in the
stack.

Several burly Target employees surrounded Mr. Swanberg's cart, which he
shoved at them in an effort to get away. They tackled him and summoned the
police. In his van was a detailed daily itinerary for Target, Wal-Mart and
Toys "R" Us stores he planned to hit, the prosecutor says.

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