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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."
I see old women do this all of the time. Not making their own barcodes, mind you, but swapping the code from the seeded cucumbers to the unseeded ones, or switch the tag from a generic bible and put it onto the fancy one they have their eye on. I wish I wasn't serious.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Many people steal, but kleptomaniacs have a compulsion to steal independent of need. As this article illustrates, the root of kleptomania is a desire for revenge upon a world that the person feels has treated them unfairly. This includes emotional mistreatment, which is independent of a high salary or success in life.
Futurist Traditionalism
With the "self-checkout" machines popping up everywhere so stores can cut down on employee costs, I'd be shocked if anyone noticed.
I assume he replaced the barcodes with UPCs for cheaper, but similar products so that a cashier wouldn't be particularly suspicious, particularly if it's a line of products with which they're not familiar. The self check might actually be harder to get by than a human, since those have a scale on the bagging side.
I am not a crackpot.
I smell a gambling addiction and the enormous debt that comes with it.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
You could be even more ambitious at the Self Serve check-outs! (especially here in Australia)
Actually the self serve checkouts (they don't use them at Target, btw, which might have made a difference in this scheme) would have served to CATCH him. The checkouts use highly accurate product weight data, combined with a scale, to tell if you are sneaking things past the scanner. In the case of this scheme, he would have been putting the barcode for a 10 oz. box of Lego onto a 3 lb box of Lego. The self serve checkout would have a fit as soon as it saw that a 3 lb box appeared when a 10oz on was supposed to.
This sort of scam is far too common. It's time that stores had updated cash registers that would display a picture of the item when the code is scanned so that it if is obviously different, it has a good chance of getting noticed. It would mean adding a display facing the checkout clerk right above the scanner, and it would require having someone take a photo of each item when it first goes on sale--the latter could be provided by the vendor.
A low 6 figure income in Mountain View (and most of California) is middle class. Family of four in the bay area? $75K/year is scrapping by.
I worked sales at a car stereo chain (well known in the NW) and was yelled at on the floor, by the manager, for selling the customer the better product instead of the one with more profit. I won't work sales anymore, my favorite line is I would rather chew on broken glass and razor blades than do sales.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
actually, some research on shoplifting has shown that the vast majority of shoplifters can afford the items that they steal. In fact, its not uncommon at all for white middle class adults to engage in shoplifting, often citing the excitement of it as one of their motivators.
The "National Association for Shoplifting Prevention" says that studies have found depression to be very common amongst shoplifters (http://www.shopliftingprevention.org/whatnaspoffers/nrc.htm).
another interesting article is here: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/14/137627302/sticky-fingers-hidden-hams-a-shoplifting-history
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The scale on the self-checkout doesn't do any sort of sanity check; it just makes sure the weight changes after scanning an item to ensure you've placed it in the bagging area.
This is not true, or at least, not true everywhere. The local grocery store chain has self-checkouts that reject things that aren't the right weight. From personal experience, I know that if get a coke out of the freezer case and drink half, then try to pay for it, you have to get a store employee to override the system.
I was a manager at a Sams Club in Buffalo NY while at college and there is some good reasoning behind this, even if you/I don't agree with it. Most large retailers goal is to boost profits but cutting expenses; one area to do this is in personnel. If you have fast cashiers, then you need fewer of them. The overwhelming majority of studies in the early to mid nineties showed that the majority of theft was employee related, so to spend a lot of time worrying about customers would be focusing on the wrong area, or as you put it, you would be stepping over millions of dollars to save a few bucks. Another study showed that very few customers who did steal, did it as a one-time deal, it would usually turn in to a pattern and unless your the luckiest man/woman on earth, you're going to get caught eventually.
As a side note, both Target and Walmart are profitable, so they can't be stepping over too many dollars...just because you don't understand something, doesn't mean it's bad.
Same here. As a high school senior, I used to work at (now-defunct) Fretter, which was a local appliance and electronics chain before Circuit City came to our area and closed them down. I was put, predictably, in the computer department. I would get hassled (and also much smaller commission checks) for selling people on the superior AST computers as opposed to the garbage (but higher-profit-margin) Packard Bells.
Honesty was not the best policy if you were trying to make a living as a salesman there. Several of the other guys would simply outright lie to customers, and it blew my mind that management had no problem with it. I swear, one of the guys was a pathological liar... but, man, he did OK for himself.
In my university days, I worked in a shop and got caught in something like this - and was pulled up by the manager for letting this go through.
Seems like the guy had been doing it quite regularily through the week, but the sums involved were tiny. He's swapped the sticker for "thermos flask" (met flsk) for "drinks flask" (pla flsk) and saved himself £5 when he came through to me. (oh, restricted characters we love you!)
I quite fairly pointed out that it is a flask, it came up with a flsk on the screen. Of course I didn't elaborate and say that I'd actually turned my mind off as he was probably the 80th customer that day I'd served and all of whom had probably more than 10 items each, and as long as the barcode beeped I didn't really care, so I kept my job at least.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
I worked retail management for about 3 years while I was finishing my masters. I don't mean to toot my own horn (okay, I kind of do), but they were desperate to keep me. Why? I was a terrible manager - I let the employees get away with murder, as long as the work got done. I was insubordinate - if the policy was stupid, I didn't follow it. I told the head of the store that I hated my job and I hated the store - every day for two years.
So, why were they desperate to keep me? I could think. The regional actually told me that he would be sad to see me go, because critical thinking is rare in retail. They dangled long-term job offers, travel, higher pay and increased benefits to try to get me to stay. Again, why?
Because I could think. They know that if you have any sort of brain, that retail is just a temporary gig on the road of life, and it makes them sad on the inside.
I worked in a camera chain that went to 100% commission. We had two cameras in the store that paid a negative commission. Somehow they were all defective/damaged packaging/lost in transit/never received. Eventually the home office got the hint and quit trying to re-stock the stores with them, but I have to think they lost more money on that then they would have if they simply ponied up a $0.50 commission on those things so that they were worthless, but not actively hostile to being sold.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I'm going to stand up for the "drones" a bit. To a certain extent pay peanuts get monkeys. But in fact there are a lot of people out there who are not hugely bright or who even have "learning difficulties", but who can do boring jobs for extended periods and are pretty accurate and reliable. I worked for a pharmaceutical manufacturer for a bit while at U, and they looked for people like this and gave them jobs in packing and QA. The difference is that instead of treating them like Walmart they worked hard to keep them motivated, told them that their work was valuable and that all the work of the chemists and the engineers was wasted if the wrong product got out of the door, and made sure that students like me understood this, and that we were easily replaceable while they weren't. They are "good finds" who won't move on. They are not stupid, they just have limitations that are different from those of, say, social ineptness. A lot of that is automated nowadays, but there are still a few, mostly smaller places without the Walmart/Bain/you name it view of replaceable monkeys, and they are often successful because they don't get the level of staff theft and they appeal to older people who value helpful and friendly staff.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Another piece of this article overlooked is the "caught by Target security". Target has some of the most comprehensive and detailed customer data of any retailer. If you're on their coupon mailing list, the mailer you get from them is customized to you; they have a profile on you that's extremely accurate and their mailers have 2-3 floating pages, where the one printed to go to your address will have coupons based on the things someone in your profile would buy, and it's highly segmented and targeted to a level that's almost creepy; it can apparently predict if a woman is pregnant and when you're due, and can start sending you targeted ads: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
Last month my car got broken into and my girlfriend's purse stolen; we were at an event and didn't get back to my car for about 5 hours after it happened. The perps took all her credit cards and started running them up, howeverher main one was canceled because they bought several items at Target which were outside of her normal profile (lots of junk food apparently, she's a very healthy eater), so they called AMEX and alerted them to fraud within 10 minutes of the fraudulent purchases, and AMEX shut her card down; we know because it got rejected at the next store they went to. They also pulled up the security tapes and were able to give video from their security cameras to the police of the guys checking out at the register. While we recovered and got all charges canceled, that was uncanny what Target was able to do to stop this crime in a matter of minutes.
I think you might have missed the whole "title inflation" phenomenon that's been going on for the last 20 years or so. Don't be ashamed. Whomever wrote the "fine" article made the same mistake, giving the impression that the accused was the second in command at SAP Global, or something.
His official title is "Vice President, SAP Integration & Certification Center (ICC)". That means he's not an executive VP at all, and his title is specific to only one of SAP's businesses. That puts him in the highest rungs of "middle management". He probably reports to the guy who reports to the guy who reports to the COO, an actual executive.
Regarding his compensation, it would be solidly in the 6 figure range. So $30k would be more meaningful to him than a mere "rounding error", but it wouldn't make difference in his standard of living, in any real sense. Having been around the block a few times, he was probably bored as hell at his job, his wife probably ignores him, and he was probably sick of the fact that his kids were the only ones in the house who had any excitement in their lives at all. It had probably been so long since he felt he was even alive, he needed the adrenaline rush just to check and see.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Sounds like when I worked at a gas station in high school and college. I was the assistant manager and was frequently offered my own store, probably 5 times in 3 years, but didn't want to spend my life managing a gas station only to eventually become a district manager. Early on I learned that a good regular, non management, retail employee was one that wouldn't steal, showed up on time, and could fog a mirror. The overnight guy met these criteria but when I first started I though he was worthless as he never got anything done. When I bitched to the manager he educated me that Ron was the ideal overnight gas station attendant as he loved working the overnight, didn't steal, showed up every day, was on time, and stayed awake. Later in my job there as assistant manager I trained a number of managers on how to manage a gas station. The sad part was how many of them had a 4 year management degree and thought they were gods gift to management. Problem was that you can't just tell a high schooler to go plunge out a toilet and expect them to do it, they need to see you go plunge one out first. Also they never understood that you can't just fire a high schooler until you have a trained replacement unless you want to pick up their shifts. The worst manager trainee we had I ended up telling him "I turned down the job you went to college to get so that I could go to college so I won't have to manage a fucking gas station the rest of my life." because he was such a condescending ass hole. One of my managers at the gas station also pointed out that he would much rather higher college students and pay them a slightly higher wage and also the tuition reimbursement (it was from the company and something like an extra $1/hr) because they were motivated workers, wouldn't just up and quit, and would show up for work unlike those who only graduated high school.
Time to offend someone
My thoughts on why Lego is not like RIAA:
When my 5 year old put his stickers from a set all over a box, I emailed Lego, and they sent me a new sticker sheet. I had offered to pay but they said, no charge. Same thing with a couple of parts that he lost. When my five-year-old scratches his Just Bieber CD... well I sure as hell don't try too hard to replace it. But if I did ever want to replace a big label CD, I doubt they would be accommodating.
Lego allows Peeron to keep scans of all the old instruction manuals online. Even though copyright hasn't technically expired, they realize that they're not likely to print old instructions. They're too busy printing new instructions. Compare that to the RIAA that sends C&D letters to lyrics websites, and tries to shut down guitar teachers from posting lessons online.
BrickLink, LugNet, etc. don't get harassed by Lego. As long as they don't use the name Lego in the website, pretty much anything goes. They have an interest in making sure the AFOL stay active. We go on to raise the next generation of Lego fans that way. :-)