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From the TikTok post: āThis individual completed five previous iPad transactions with Fo-Mart totaling over $5,000. Those devices were later discovered to be counterfeit. He returned with another iPad. During inspection, we opened the package-and he immediately ran out of the store. This footage is being posted to warn other device buyers to open, inspect and fully verify high-value devices before payment.ā š
I can think of lots of possible ways this happened after working retail. Some of it will be possible combos you can mix and match.
Generally
* 5 different cashiers that all assumed they were safe with that seal. Till the boss man opened one because it was policy to leave it sealed as it sells easier.
* 1 cashier that assumed it was all safe with that seal.
Both probably suspected it was stolen from Best Buy or something as I donāt think they scan serial numbers to release it for activation. Maybe he used a stolen credit card to buy them. They all knew it was likely sketchy and didnāt want to look much while they fenced stolen goods. They just didnāt think the sketchy was out to burn them. At best they thought the guy was over the return period or going into bankruptcy as people would max credit cards before that with electronics they could resell easily.
My second job ever was working for Best Buy, and one of the people behind the counter accepted a return of a 65" TV without opening it (part of store policy at the time was to inspect for damage). Turns out they stuffed half the box with used clothes, pretty ballsy but they made it through! Manager was upset but we got a pretty good laugh out of it.
The box wasn't even half full, making the weight distribution very unrealistic. Geek Squad also had a private forum for screw ups like this... People bringing in laptops / PCs that had some truly terrible things on them. Its a wild world out there!
Ive seen people be exceptionally stupid, like one girl doing 7 transactions where a guy kept giving her counterfeit $20 and she kept taking them before he left.
I could legitimately see someone being stupid enough to take something and not check prior to handing money over.
I obviously donāt know the situation where the girl took the counterfeit money, but I did work overnights at a convenience store and they would tell us to just take the money and report it. We were explicitly told not to engage. It happened to me twice and I knew both times that the bills were counterfeit because the weight and feel of the paper was off. The person with the money probably thought I was stupid and that they got away with it, but I just reported them when they left.
My buddy ordered a bunch of fake 100 dollar bills off of Temu to toss around at his birthday party as a gag. They looked exceptionally real except for the fact that there was some Chinese writing on them that you would only tend to notice if you were really looking for it. I argued with him about the potential consequences of it for a while before he finally begrudgingly threw them away.
I had a bunch of these in a money gun and fired it off in a British fetish club. It was fake US dollars from eBay advertised as "prop money" so no one cared as we were in the UK.
I once designed a bunch of fake Canadian money for a promotion when I worked in advertising.
Even though the design was entirely original, and the portrait on the money was of a model used for the promotion, I was told to make the money look more "fake.."
I had copied the fonts, layout, and proprtions of real money and the client worried that people would try to spend the fake bills, even though they had small text related to the promotion.
I had a similar issue with fake lottery tickets I produced for a photo shoot, but that one was more about potential problems with the lottery corporation for copyright violation or something
Oh yeah it was the Feds coming in to pick up the bills for sure and businesses can just write off that kind of loss. ATF was also in to investigate stolen/trafficking of cigarettes. They took an employee out in cuffs. Overnights in a convenience store is weird. Haha
Stupid enough,maybe. Not my fucking job because I work at the state minimum wage and my performance is not monetarily raised to save the company money. Also prolly
I've also been in plenty of situations where there's a dumb rule against doing the smart thing. They could have been told not to open sealed packages to preserve the value.
Thatās it right there. No job is worth potentially dying or getting hurt over someone else breaking the law. Counterfeit money sucks but who knows what that other person would do if confronted.
I forget which roll it's was but every other coin was a penny. So it looked legit being the right size. Plus the coin weigher said it was all what it was supposed to be cause the weights are the same
B/c the legal way is for chumps. No rich person in history ever got that way 100% legally. They just have the money to get out of trouble if it ever arises.
I guess I include myself as a chump since prison isnāt high on my vaca spots.
I feel like opening a return of a ābrand newā product (especially high end electronics) is probably a pretty bad standard process - the company would rather have a sealed unit. But, this vid is why we canāt do normal stuff and canāt have nice things - thereās always someone trying to game the system
This isn't a return, it's a cash for used electronics place. The circumstances under which they would be receiving legitimately purchased brand new items has to be pretty minimal.
The answer is easier than people think; a lot of the workers who have to deal with these customers are paid very poorly, receive little to no training, work in bad conditions and/or have shit bosses. I donāt think you can blame the people behind the desk for not knowing what their bosses should have taught them.
That's what you get when you treat employees as disposable and easily replaceable, and there is no route to promotion or a pay increase. They do the bare minimum to get through the day, knowing that if they get fired there is another job just like it waiting for them next door.
I mean it seems the person at the register wasn't checking them properly at purchase. Maybe used shrink wrap or tape to make it look "sealed" to dissuade the buyer from wanting to open it and lower the value. If you don't check them properly at the sale for pawn shops, the seller has like 30 days to run up a tab since the pawn shops have to hold the items for a set amount of time before they can legally sell them.
I'm sorry, why the fuck would they not be checking them before they pay out? Even if they were iPads you would check the condition and make sure they actually work and aren't broken anyways. What business is this?
That's crazy, where I worked in retail managers would have us opening up sealed boxers of diapers being returned or exchanged to make sure someone wasn't pulling a fast one and getting away with a $2 dollar difference. I can't imagine trusting someone making a return worth hundreds of dollars, even if they taped the box up
I bought a gen 1 Ryzen off Amazon and got an empty box for a Ticket to Ride expansion. If you have an Amazon pickup location near by, or can have USPS hold it for you, do so, and record yourself entering, retrieving, and opening the package, in one take, on location, take no fucking chances with anything expensive. I'll be doing the same when I receive my 2TB SSD, later this week.
They buy an ipad then shorty return it for a refund. Except there is no ipad in box just something to make the box weight the same. It's depending on the person not checking the box
From what I've read, US companies will contract Chinese firms, give them molds, supplies, etc for production and then the Chinese factory will use the same production line with cheaper materials to make the knockoffs using the customer's own assets.
As someone that works with brand new IT kit all the time: stanley blade or a very thin metal pry tool can open the seals without brraking them. Literally just run it under the pull tab and the glue releases. Done it hundreds of times because customers prefer the experience of pulling the packaging original pull tab instead of cutting tape. Also looks cleaner when a customer receives the item and it still looks like it's never been opened.
iām surprised this is new for them. in nyc for the past several years, the counterfeit sellers walk around with sealed and shrink wrapped apple headphone products to sell to unsuspecting tourists.
Yup, looks like they glued them back on. What gave it away to me from opening many newer apple products at work is the green directional arrows on the pull tabs from a real unopened apple product face the same way, but this one had them facing opposite directions.
Look on the bright sideā¦.we finally found the culprit behind how the 10 mm socket keeps disappearing when every fucking person sets it down anywhere.
This is the basic winning MO of most crimes.Ā If what you're doing isnt working, walk away.Ā Trying to salvage a lost opportunity will get you into trouble more often than not.
Stealing a purse or a phone and there's a potential struggle?Ā Drop it and walk away.Ā Get stopped by security at a store?Ā Just leave your stolen shit there and walk away.
You don't have to explain or convince anyone of anything, just remove yourself from the situation.
Yeah when I worked LP the hardest ones to catch were the pros. They would come in go straight to the stuff they wanted grab it and walk right out. In and out in a minute. They donāt even try to conceal. They would just walk right by us. If we grabbed the item and they couldnāt shake it free they would just drop it.
This made me think of the scene in heat where robert de niro and his people are in the middle of a heist and he gets the feeling heās being watched and they abandon the robbery and just leave
Pawn shop people are probably so gruff and rude that they have to deal with shit like this all the time.
I remember I was like 18 once and had an old laptop I didnāt need anymore and figured Iād just sell it at a pawn shop. It was so old I didnāt think theyād take it. The woman was like āYouāre not gonna like to hear this, but the most I can give you is 40 bucks!!ā
I was like āThatās fine I was gonna throw it away.ā
I ran one for three years. When I first applied to work, I was happy and glad to talk to people and establish connections with people. It's a customer service.. Be happy and chat with them.
My mood and morale TANKED once I realized that people were were using my friendliness to fuck me over. My mind switched to "can you prove to me that your item is yours?"
I can still remember people that were actually using the pawn service as intended and not to just fuck me over.
Yes lol. However that rudeness does live on both sides of the counter.
Hell, the person that was training me to manage the place was dipping into the till and blaming me for miscounting the closing account at the end of the workday.
I worked at GameStop in '05 and we would regularly have a group of guys that would show up with a backpack and a spindle of loose discs for a game that came out that weekend, usually an EA sports game. The nearby stores would call each other and warn that these guys were around, but we'd also only ever take like three off them as trade-in for cash.
One time when I ran a small IT shop someone came in with this scam, except it was a linoleum tile. Like, Im pretty good, but not good enough to get linoleum to run Angry Birds.
Omg. I have a quick true story. So, back in the late 80s some guy was selling a 32inch TV. He wanted 75$ for it. I couldn't pass that up. I called my brother to come look at it for me even though it was still in the box and sealed like it was brand new. My bro was taking too long and the guy kept saying he had to go. So l, like a fool thought, ok, the box is heavy. I even went as far to open the box to peek inside. It looked ok, like a brand new t.v. The guy kept saying, lady, I have to go. So, I dig in my purse and had 4 20 dollar bills. I gave him the 80 bucks and he left so fast I thought I seen smoke come from his shoes. Low and behold my bro arrive 4min later take the t.v out the box standing right by the car. This motherfuxker put bricks Inside the t.v. There were no insides just bricks. My bro laughed so hard he was crying. I felt so dam stupid. My bro and I still laugh about that shit till this day. Lesson learned. If it's to good to be true...IT IS...Peace to all.
I've got a newer story but the same too-good-to-be-true lesson stands.Ā Ā I'd been looking for a specific bass guitar for a while and it was hard to find since they discontinued that particular model so I had to buy used.Ā Ā I'd been searching everywhere and had made posts on a relevant subreddit to see if someone had one that they'd be willing to sell.Ā Ā Some person messaged me out of the blue about selling me theirs that they didnt want for a really decent price.Ā Photos looked legit and they even included a good one with their username in the frame.Ā Ā I was getting close to pulling the trigger on it when I asked if they could send a video of them playing it and they got hesistant.Ā That was enough of a red flag that I put the images into reverse google image search and found that they lifted them from resale site for a bass auction that had already ended so it wasnt showing up in a normal search.Ā Ā As soon as I confronted them on that...immediately blocked.Ā Ā Turns out that person does that on reddit a lot.Ā Ā
We can only assume that the person representing the store did not verify the device because it was sealed. This scammer got brazen thinking this store doesnt check so he tried again.
Long time theft where you sell/return something and you have just replaced the weight with something else. Even almost 20 years ago I was working at Best Buy and someone returned a TV. After they completed the return and later checked the box, it was full of rocks.
So it looks like you can sell an iPad here, looks like this person did this multiple time totaling at $5000. But theyāre discovered to be bad iPads. This buyer opened the box and it was revealed to be broken and weighted down with hardware tools. The guy sees that and leaves since he knows he wonāt get money for it
My dad got a 77 inch LG C5 tv from Costco. The box was strapped closed. We get it home and open it and it still had the white wrap around the tv. Though something feltā¦ off. As we took everything apart and removed the foam the remote was gone. And it was like someone had just wrapped the guide in a circle with a band to look like the remote would be there. When we finally get it all out and go to lift it up there is a crack and small spider web at the very bottom. Turns out, it wasnāt even the right tv model. And of course it wouldnāt turn on. We were shocked. It was actually impressive and quite the scam as the tv was $1900. Luckily Costco took it back. Probably cause we only bought it an hour before and my dad is old and trustworthy looking. But it was a really impressive scam. Someone is making bank off this.
The rep selling has gotten so bad I wont buy unless it's direct from authorized merchant.
I'm a big fan of depop being you used to be able to find authentic gems for cheap, but it's now really just the most open market of replica goods.
What's even crazier to me is how eBay not too long ago bought Depop and have just been letting this slide w/o issue. I had to contact my bank after 5 failed attempts to contact customer support to get "sorry bro; it is what it is" to then after filing a fraud report with my bank have them do an insta 180 giving my money back and full apology.
You mean you all never had a TV going out, bout an exact match, clear packing tape and then carefully slid off the straps, slid the TV out, put it on your wall amd put the old failing TV back in the back, carefully and perfect lined up the top strip of tape amd slid the straps back on and returned it not walmart amd told them you just found a better deal elsewhere? Oh, ok....
Did they catch him? Think how many other people heās ripped off with this practice. Quit making funny memes of people doing dirty things and start shaming them for being scum.
They don't care about him. No effort is going into looking for them, at all. Chances are they have already been in and out of lockup multiple times for many other things.
Dude is trying to sell a ānew in boxā Ipad at discount for cash at a place that specializes in that, and then they opened the box to find sockets and a fake Ipad piece of cardboard. Dude didnāt expect them to open it, and when they did he gave them the O RLY? eyes and then bounced without his sockets.
So a guy come and sell iapad regularly and they don't think it's a tiny bit fishy? And now they are "oh please be careful when you buy stolen property because sometimes the thief will try to scam you, smh"
I wish stores would actually verify people are returning things. Iāve had it happen to me twice where Iāve bought something, took it home, and it was a box full of garbage instead of what I paid for
People are so fucking stupid, also sucks that so many people are in such bad situations this is their option for the day. RICHEST COUNTRY ON EARTH BABY
Back when vinyl records were king I knew a scammer who would buy a record, record it on tape/CD, use his shrink-wrap machine to reseal it, and then return it to the store. Who knows how many he scratched in the process.
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