Had an interesting experience in Calgary Cabela's the other day...

[KGB]

Originally Posted by EZM

I figure the credit card they used to pay for the goods was likely stolen too ….

About a hundred years ago, my best friend in high school told me the best scam ever ….. 2 normal looking guys come into the store (he worked at Canadian Tire) with a purchase order looking paper (and some receipt stapled to it) and go up to customer service ask the manager if they can get some assistance picking up this "large order for the boys and girls club". So my friend and another co-worker get "assigned" this order to help pull the stuff - a canoe, sleeping bags, stove, paddle, life jackets, tent, coolers, lantern all sorts of canoe and camping gear …. even the department manager jumps in and helps them pack it all up and take it around back to load onto the guys truck - which they do.

About 30 minutes later the customer service manager is asking who rang the order in ….. guess what ……… nobody, they were talking and deflecting the whole time from the moment they came in at the front and hit up "the junior associate" and all the way to when they loaded out and had the "managers" chirping it up with them.

Was a ballzy beauty. they were in the store for like 40 minutes ….. lol

This is a very common scam. They modified it a little bit but the idea is still the same. I had it probably two dozens of times. I get a phone call from a big name company like let say Pricission Drilling and they need 5-6 items for their camp or whatever else. Here is the purchase order for the amount of money the merchandise was worth as per the sales order. They are sending the driver to pick it up. I called cops every time and every single time I was told that they can’t do anything! The crime is not committed until we actually try to get paid by PD... The driver most likely was just a random Hot Shot driver that had nothing to do with the scam itself....

[58thecat]

Originally Posted by Talking moose

Can’t do anything to a theif until they leave the store.

Yup....no harm done....nex...oh as long as she was a beauty it was worth the watcht

[calgarygringo]

I will add another funny canoe story from back in the 70's when I was a DC manager back in Winnipeg at Woolco and a store manager told me this one.

2 guys come in and look at the canoe they had on display on top of a shelf. They lift it off and start carrying it towards the door. The girl at the pharmacy desk (side door) gives them the wave and have a nice day as they leave. A couple of days later the store manager calls me and asks if I still had any canoes in stock and of course I laughed as nobody ever sells one of those but his store did. After a few days he calls me back and in talking to staff and checking things there is no record of the canoe being sold. A week or so later a couple of guys come into the store asking about a set of paddles for their canoe that they never received when they bought it. The kid in the sporting goods dept. light when on and he told them to wait while he called the store manager. He showed up with the LP guy and turns out they were the canoe thieves too. Hard to believe they would do that but I guess they figured if they were that stupid to let them walk out they may as well try.

[calgarygringo]

I also did a short stint at Superstore as an assistant store manager and had to work with the LP people all the time witnessing thefts. You would be surprised how much stuff goes out the door we would catch or watch them on the cameras. I was there at the end of the old style of when they crossed the line of the door you take them down and hold them for the police days and it was crazy. Women with hundreds of dollars of makeup under their babies with kids in tow, cart fulls of meat was very common, clothing in bags or the going through the self checkout and or regular checkouts and not run things through the scanner. These were all common happenings every hour of every day. At the end before I left they stopped the holding of people and moved to just calling the police as they were worried about getting sued so I would imagine it is even worse now.

[Stinky Buffalo]

That explains why a lot of items are behind locked glass/caged doors. I know for certain that having those measures in place cost them some sales as well, though. Many shoppers are not going to wait for 10-15 minutes to find someone with a key to open it for them.

I guess it's part of the loss calculation.

[Ken07AOVette]

Originally Posted by ghostguy6

I used to work for a company that would test other security companies. We had a contract to test a well known store. We decided to strike on Boxing Day and took the store for over $100,000 in merchandise. Big ticket items like TV's, bikes, furniture and appliances. All sanctioned of course and all merchandise was returned. The store's security guard even helped load one of the tv's into a young woman's car. The only reason we stopped was because we ran out of storage room in the sea can we were using to store the items. Of the entire crew only once was anyone questioned, all they did was check the receipt but still let the person go. It was the 4th time we used that receipt we found in the parking lot to pick up a large screen tv. The manager took all the staff to the sea can at the end of the night. All of their loss prevention officers were fired that night. Because the items were being so closely monitored for our test the store reported an additional $20,000 of items missing that were taken by your every day thieves that day. Only one shoplifter was caught with a video game worth maybe $65.

An organized retail crime group can take a store for practically any item they wish. Sometimes they will send in a decoy, someone who makes it obvious they have stolen something to distract the staff while the rest of the group takes the high value items.

That's wild.

I have offered many times to sit in a nest at Bestbuy for my buddy, but he said I couldn't because the rifle would be too loud lol!
The stories are unreal, and as you would expect so much of the theft is internal. Nobody is charged there anymore either.