Computers Returned in Walmart Scam

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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This is why we can't have nice things at Walmart, but this is also why you can get really cheap computer hardware deals on Craigslist. This guy was buying computers from Walmart, pulling hardware from those systems, then returning the computers for a full exchange. Apparently he did this more than once as well as the grand total of the fraud amounts to $1.3M.

Check out the video.
 
1,300,000 / 1000 = 1300
1,300,000 / 2000 = 650

Not sure how many systems he stole, but either way that's a lot of stealing. Kind of hard to believe. Maybe they're including the legal costs..
 
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Lith1um said:
1,300,000 / 1000 = 1300
1,300,000 / 2000 = 650

Not sure how many systems he stole, but either way that's a lot of stealing. Kind of hard to believe. Maybe they're including the legal costs..
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Seriously. I don't think Walmart even sales computers with decent hardware. Also I would think he would of ran into a employee that actually does their job and checks what he brings back.
 
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vegeta535 said:
Seriously. I don't think Walmart even sales computers with decent hardware. Also I would think he would of ran into a employee that actually does their job and checks what he brings back.
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If that isn't part of their policies to do so...then you don't do it. In a job like that, "free thinking" isn't an asset...it is a liability. What if the guy calls out somebody on something and is "wrong"? Can you imagine the PR shit show on that?
 
vegeta535 said:
Seriously. I don't think Walmart even sales computers with decent hardware. Also I would think he would of ran into a employee that actually does their job and checks what he brings back.
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The most they do is check the serial number
 
Some reports stated that it was, in fact, laptops that we're being stripped and returned. Probably pulled SSD's and RAM.
 
vegeta535 said:
Seriously. I don't think Walmart even sales computers with decent hardware. Also I would think he would of ran into a employee that actually does their job and checks what he brings back.
Click to expand...

If they took the time to test this stuff then everyone would bitch
 
vegeta535 said:
Also I would think he would of ran into a employee that actually does their job and checks what he brings back.
Click to expand...

Not sure what an employee would be able to do. Guy comes back and says the computer doesn't work, which it wouldn't since he ripped parts out of it.
 
Verge said:
If they took the time to test this stuff then everyone would bitch
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Thieves are going to thief, I suppose. Walmart did the actuarial math, I'm sure, that indicated it's better to take the hit than invest in more human resources to do more return procedures.
 
Lith1um said:
1,300,000 / 1000 = 1300
1,300,000 / 2000 = 650

Not sure how many systems he stole, but either way that's a lot of stealing. Kind of hard to believe. Maybe they're including the legal costs..
Click to expand...
Maybe it's the cost of wages of the people they had to pay to find out this man was steeling. Cause I ask the question, how many millions of dollars of computer equipment would it take for a Walmart employee to catch the criminal? No better, to even check to see if the computer even works.

I really doubt he's done it more than 20 times before being caught, cause otherwise I think Walmart needs to either hire more employees or pay them better.
 
I once returned a tv to the wallmart store. the box was unopened ( i just neede a copy of the reciept for the insurance part as iwanted to add money in and get something bigger)
Yet still the employee opened the seals box to check the content.

During the process she insured me 3-4 times that she had to check it, like she was ready that there was gonna be a blow out.
I fell bad for what these underpaid ppl have to deal with of crap from customers
 
Joust said:
Thieves are going to thief, I suppose. Walmart did the actuarial math, I'm sure, that indicated it's better to take the hit than invest in more human resources to do more return procedures.
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They scan your drivers license upon return, i'm sure this guy was doing something shady to get around that or they would have flagged him pretty quickly.
 
Verge said:
They scan your drivers license upon return, i'm sure this guy was doing something shady to get around that or they would have flagged him pretty quickly.
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I don't get my ID swiped when I have the receipt.

Buy the computer in cash (can't track a CC#), keep the receipt (no DL tracking), vary the store (no single store has an inordinate number of returns) and times you come in (you don't see the same employee twice). You could probably get away with this for quite some time before someone notices.
 
Walmart has a real nice PC section if you haven't checked them out recently WD SSD drives Gsync monitors 1080P and 1440P Cyberpower PCs and about 4 different gaming laptops along with the latest Razer mice Corsair mechanical keyboards and the like.
 
Comixbooks said:
Walmart has a real nice PC section if you haven't checked them out recently WD SSD drives Gsync monitor Cyberpower PCs and about 4 different gaming laptops along with the latest Razer mice
Corsair mechanical keyboards and the like.
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Definitely a YMMV situation, but the Walmart with the best selection near me has a full catalog of Razer stuff, and a number of other suprising things. Like they have the acer 27" 2k 144hz panels.
 
Joust said:
Definitely a YMMV situation, but the Walmart with the best selection near me has a full catalog of Razer stuff, and a number of other suprising things. Like they have the acer 27" 2k 144hz panels.
Click to expand...

Walmart and Best Buy are catering to PC gamers these days particularly with accessories. Best Buy especially carries a lot of top line keyboards, mice, headsets from many of the major OEMs, Corsair, Logitech, Razor, etc. I was at a BB this weekend using some birthday gift cards and they even had a couple of full tower gaming PCs on display in the middle of their PC section and not off to the side, along with several gaming laptops. While the overall PC market is pretty stagnant it does seem that PC gaming hardware is a bigger deal than ever.
 
Joust said:
Some reports stated that it was, in fact, laptops that we're being stripped and returned. Probably pulled SSD's and RAM.
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Most likely this.

The $1.3 Million is likely the full retail value of the computers involved, not the value of the parts he stole.

Buy a $3,000 laptop, strip out the SSD and Ram and sell them for $600, then return the non-working laptop.

If he had only done this a few times, he likely would have gotten away with it.
But like most crooks he got greedy and kept stealing till he got caught.
 
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All of this over the "non-working" aspect of them, what if he stripped out expensive parts and put back in cheaper ones so it did still work, and upon a quick visual inspection still appeared like everything was ok. Some poor slob buys the open box that still works, then wonders why his graphics look like complete ass even though the computer should be able to play the game he bought at 1080p.

And this wouldn't be a feasible thing if there wasn't a Walmart ever 20 minutes in some parts of the country :D I kid kid! But this is why when I return a PVC elbow I didn't need for a plumbing project I sometimes get flagged by Lowes and not given a discount instead given a gift card, sometimes but not always.
 
Joust said:
Some reports stated that it was, in fact, laptops that we're being stripped and returned. Probably pulled SSD's and RAM.
Click to expand...

He would have pulled the CPUs as well. Retail systems skimp on many things, but several models will have higher end CPUs in them.
 
sfsuphysics said:
All of this over the "non-working" aspect of them, what if he stripped out expensive parts and put back in cheaper ones so it did still work, and upon a quick visual inspection still appeared like everything was ok. Some poor slob buys the open box that still works, then wonders why his graphics look like complete ass even though the computer should be able to play the game he bought at 1080p.

And this wouldn't be a feasible thing if there wasn't a Walmart ever 20 minutes in some parts of the country :D I kid kid! But this is why when I return a PVC elbow I didn't need for a plumbing project I sometimes get flagged by Lowes and not given a discount instead given a gift card, sometimes but not always.
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Where I am at, there is a Walmart about every 10 minutes. The super-ghetto one (wanna get shived?) shut down so one Walmart is more like 20-25 minutes from the others.. but still.
 
SvenBent said:
I once returned a tv to the wallmart store. the box was unopened ( i just neede a copy of the reciept for the insurance part as iwanted to add money in and get something bigger)
Yet still the employee opened the seals box to check the content.

During the process she insured me 3-4 times that she had to check it, like she was ready that there was gonna be a blow out.
I fell bad for what these underpaid ppl have to deal with of crap from customers
Click to expand...

Yeah I returned a 55" TV to Best Buy Sony 850D which had horribad IPS panel that didn't actually display black properly. Took the time to rebox it perfectly, etc. When I did the return they totally destroyed all the packaging, etc. I got my money back, but yeah.. wasn't pretty.
 
This is what happens when you pay your employees nothing. They don't care. They just do the minimum amount of work to not get fired.
 
Verge said:
They scan your drivers license upon return, i'm sure this guy was doing something shady to get around that or they would have flagged him pretty quickly.
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Yeah, quite a few big box stores either scan some traceable ID or at least keep a record of the cards used to purchase. Too many returns and you get cut off, unless he had some inside connection that allowed him to work around that.

heatlesssun said:
Walmart and Best Buy are catering to PC gamers these days particularly with accessories. Best Buy especially carries a lot of top line keyboards, mice, headsets from many of the major OEMs, Corsair, Logitech, Razor, etc. I was at a BB this weekend using some birthday gift cards and they even had a couple of full tower gaming PCs on display in the middle of their PC section and not off to the side, along with several gaming laptops. While the overall PC market is pretty stagnant it does seem that PC gaming hardware is a bigger deal than ever.
Click to expand...

Best Buy has had at least a small selection of higher end gamer parts for years. Accessories would be at MSRP and then reduced by whatever general sale is going on while parts like upper-range video cards would be MSRP to 20-50% over MSRP and then reduced by whatever sale is going on.
 
The only time I even go into Wally World is if I am depressed and/or suicidal. After walking around for around 3 minutes or so I leave and feel SO much better about myself and my life.

Every time I do regrettably enter Wal-Mart it seems I see or hear some creepy loser human being whining or yelling at an employee for something that is crazy stupid or their fault anyway. I feel so bad for their employees and honestly hope the best for them.
 
Lith1um said:
1,300,000 / 1000 = 1300
1,300,000 / 2000 = 650

Not sure how many systems he stole, but either way that's a lot of stealing. Kind of hard to believe. Maybe they're including the legal costs..
Click to expand...

Worth noting this is likely corporate math. I'd guess that every return here is being counted as a total loss for the sale price, not the actual cost of goods or salvage price.

So if he did it to $2000 laptops, stole $200 worth of parts, and Walmart took a $400 loss (after salvage), they're counting it as a $2000 loss to police. They do this to get restitution higher as it creates leverage for the prosecutor in negotiations (betting the guy won't have a good lawyer to audit this stuff). Assuming he kept them in good shape for the return, the manufacturer or distributor likely bought them back at a discount knowing they could restuff them and put them back out as refurbished units.

His actual take-home from the scam was probably something like 10% or less of what is being reported.
 
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Used to make me fucking nuts... I was a Support Manager @ Wallys for a few years.. would get returns, and when I looked in the box you would see that brand new graphics card was really a 10-15 year old dial-up modem... or some other crap. Durps in Returns give not the single shit.. almost never look @ an item, and wouldn't be able to identify it if they did. You get people bringing back shit that are clearly labeled 'Dollar General'.... and Durps take it back and refund... *face-palm*
 
I get where someone could get away with this a few times, but over a million bucks worth? How is that even possible?

I returned a laptop there once that had a bad video flex cable, made the display freak out. They made me take it out of box and prove the issue. All I wanted was exchange but they didn't have any more (black Friday). They were real dicks about it.
 
Verge said:
If they took the time to test this stuff then everyone would bitch
Click to expand...

Pretty much this, it's already 'simply too much' for the precious customers that we dare check the serial number b/c they obviously would never try to pull some shady shit. Never!! /s

If the employee tries to push the issue thinking something is wrong, the customer just starts screaming, the manager tells them to do it anyway and "take care of the customer", the employee gets in trouble, and the customer also gets a gift card. After that happens enough times you just say fuck it and do exactly what policy demands.
 
wolfofone said:
Pretty much this, it's already 'simply too much' for the precious customers that we dare check the serial number b/c they obviously would never try to pull some shady shit. Never!! /s

If the employee tries to push the issue thinking something is wrong, the customer just starts screaming, the manager tells them to do it anyway and "take care of the customer", the employee gets in trouble, and the customer also gets a gift card. After that happens enough times you just say fuck it and do exactly what policy demands.
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The business of business is business. If you don't think that Walmart doesn't have people figuring out the best way to minimize loss vs dollar invested to prevent that loss...then I don't know what to tell you.
 
this dude traveled the country, seeing all the great walmart stores from coast to coast, all on walmart's dime.

well played!
 
viscountalpha said:
Thieves are the worst, but happening to wal-mart? My heart bleeds for them /sarcasm.
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Walmart loses nothing on the deal. They send the defective machines back to their supplier for full credit. Their supplier has the choice of eating that cost or losing their contract to supply Walmart. Too big to fail totally applies to Walmart!
 
can't believe more snakes aren't doing this. ripping out nvme drives and shit.
and can't believe it took this long to find out.

Is this guy paying cash?

Not too long ago, I bought a bunch of computer shit from walmart.com, and after several returns, they warned me that I would be banned from doing so for 6 months.

How is this guy getting away with 1000+ returns?
 
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