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SAP VP Arrested In False Barcode Scheme
redletterdave writes "With barcode scanning being so commonplace, nothing seemed out of the ordinary when Thomas Langenbach, the vice president of SAP, was found scanning boxes upon boxes of Lego toys before purchasing them. Little did anyone know, the 47-year-old Silicon Valley executive was actually engaged in a giant scam. Langenbach would visit several Target stores and cover the store's barcodes with his own, so when he would bring the boxes up to the register, Langenbach would pay a heavily-discounted price. For example, this tag swapping allowed him to buy a Millennium Falcon box of Legos worth $279 for just $49. Once he bought the discounted Lego boxes, the SAP executive would take to eBay (under the name 'tomsbrickyard') and sell the items. Langenbach reportedly sold more than 2,000 items on eBay, raking in about $30,000. He was finally caught by Target security on May 8, and he was arraigned on Tuesday on four counts of burglary."
So you expect the drones at the cash register to know the prices of a billion different store items? You'd be tough to work for...
Surely VP of SAP doesn't need to be doing that?
Some sort of mental illness of thrill-seeking?
Really? Doesn't a VP at SAP make enough money to afford his lifestyle? Is he so greedy that he's gotta do this kind of crap? And where does he find the TIME to post 2000 items to eBay?
Clearly, things at SAP must be doing badly because #1) he's not making enough and #2) He's got plenty of time to sit at work posting shit to eBay.
I don't have time to clean out the junk in my house and post crap to eBay. I barely have time to write this post.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Which part of $8/hour confuses you?
Work just enough not to get fired, paid just enough not to quit.
"His name was James Damore."
He'll get off easier than some kid downloading a couple songs.
This sounds like brain-dead retarded management policy. Stepping over a dollar to save a dime.
They didn't deserve you.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
How does this compare to the ongoing financial scams being perpetrated on all of us?
Totally different ... he got arrested.
I would expect them to see that the description that comes up isn't what the product is. The price isn't stored in the bar code, you can't change the barcode to make the product lower priced, but you can print a bar code for a cheaper item and stick it on the expensive one. The till would bring up the product description and price of the cheap item, so they need to be selling a cheaper item with a sufficiently similar description that it would not get noticed by a sleepy drone. This is a pretty high risk method of stealing stuff.
Welcome to retail sales. Management = retarded.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I should know I use to be one and I was the "odd man out" that would notice these things and say something.
(emphasis added)
I see this line of thinking a lot, and there's a key factor people tend to forget. There's a reason you've moved on to bigger and better things, and a reason some people continue to do that menial work for a decade. When you hire low wage employees for a while, you begin to realize that any "good find" won't be there for long, because they're meant for something more important.
Cash register workers are smarter and more observant than you may think. Purchasing a $280 Lego set for $50 will raise all kinds of eyebrows. Shucks, I bet some of the workers ran back to see if they could buy one themselves. So Tom was definitely an idiot, risking his entire career and reputation like this. I expect that he would have been apprehended much sooner if not for most people's intimidation by technology -- being unaware of how easy it is to create a fake bar code.
There's a set of rules for the great unwashed, and another for the 1%.
The marvellous book Freakonomics describes how rich people steal, lie and cheat more often, because their sense of entitlement gets there in the first place.
But I'm not sure I'm allowed to post this. It's election year, therefore we're not allowed to say anything that might offend conservatives, Republicans or rich people.
I swear, this 1% shit is getting old. A story gets posted to /. about on guy stealing from Target, and suddenly this classist bullshit gets posted.
Why can't it just be that this guy is an idiot with mental problems? Or just an idiot with kleptomania?
m
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
You know what else is (mostly) charged by weight? Transport and storage cost.
Adding all that extra weight (and likely also volume) to expensive items also makes them more expensive to produce, transport and store. The additional cost may very well outweigh the occasional losses due to sociapaths.
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I think he's pretty accurate actually. Way back in the day when I was in retail, I loved going to work because then I had time to just let my brain 'switch off' and I could think about whatever I wanted to. It was actually a restful break from classes and homework. Nowadays, I dread going to work, because I have a big boy job and I'm paid to think, not to do.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Exactly this. You pay people barely above minimum wage and expect them to give a shit? I remember being in a Walmart once and somebody clearly had something stuffed up their sweater, and I mean clearly, it was a large bumpy item. He was standing right in front of the customer service desk and the drone behind the desk didn't bat an eyelid.
Except it's not a translation of the word of God, but a translation of a bunch of superstitious middle-eastern tribesmen from 2000 odd years ago (or more).
Modded insightful and not flamebait? Come on...
The guy was making a lot of money off of his theft. Kleptomaniacs typically don't sell stuff on Ebay at high mark-up, they keep, give away, or even donate the stuff the take. Precisely because profit isn't the motive of kleptomaniacs, I believe this guy was just doing it for the cash. Sad, given his apparently position and likely social stature, but he needs to go to jail, not a mental hospital.
I think the bigger questions are "WTF was the VP of SAP doing pulling a cheap ass eBay scam like what your average meth head would pull? Is he a kelpto? Is the company in trouble? Is his pay THAT shitty?" These questions sound more relevant to me than how long he was able to pull this shit off.
Because frankly go to any Walmart at rush hour and the checkout girls ain't looking at shit, they are just rushing that shit across the scanner as fast as they can to try to lower the lines. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised that if in most of these chains they probably get bitched at if the line gets too long so looking at what the scanner pulls up is probably the last thing on their minds.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Right, because clearly the claim that it's the work of some ancient tribesmen is the more outrageous claim than the one that it's the literal word of some magical invisible sky fairy. Clearly the burden of proof lies with me.
Have you ever tried to do 3D printing? It will be quite some time before a RepRap will be able to produce the tight tolerances required for the soul-inspiring "snap" of Lego bricks. Even half of the no-name brand bricks can't get it right. Some of them can't even control tolerances enough to keep the bricks from falling apart or not be able to snap together in the first place. It costs a lot more money to make a 1.00 mm part than a 1.0 mm part.
Sadly, both groups may work on Wall Street: Capitalists and Other Psychopaths.
Note that there are numerous objections to this opinion piece (probably by other Wall Street psychopaths - ha!) for using under-representative source data and an incorrect interpretation of that data - even after a correction to the article - and those objections may all be accurate, but the article somehow seems at least plausible anyway, if you ask me.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .