Stupid Criminal of the Day

I am not an expert on the matter but, if you are a Best Buy employee, it is probably not a good idea to steal a customer's identity so you can buy three iPads from the store you work at.

Diaz said the assistant manager handed him receipts showing three purchases of iPad Air tablets on Dec. 4. Two tablets were purchased in one transaction at 11:31 a.m. and the third was purchased five minutes later at 11:36 a.m. The transactions charged more than $1,600 to Diaz’s Best Buy credit card. Diaz said the man who stole his identity is allegedly the employee who sold him the cell phone.

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Diaz said he has a weekly spending limit of $1,000 on his Best Buy credit card

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I'm guessing that spending limit is self imposed and not any sort of real limit? Otherwise how could someone buy $1600 worth of stuff on the same day?

Either way the shittiest part of this

“We have the name of the employee that was allegedly involved in this and at some point if Best Buy comes forward with additional information we may be able to put together a package for prosecution,” Robinson said.

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If the big company who doesn't want any bad press and has really nothing to gain by stepping forward with information comes forward with information then the person will be charged with a crime.

Fucking pathetic

Well he isn't that stupid, as of right now he has gotten away with it.

“I feel betrayed because I always put Best Buy at a very high level,” Diaz said. “I’m a Best Buy customer. I love the store, so when I go in there of course I’m going to trust them. I figure if I go there my information is safe and now that’s not the case.”

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There's part of the problem right there...
"at a very high level"
"of course I’m going to trust them"
"I figure if I go there my information is safe"

I worked retail for 7 years, including 2 at Best Buy, before I got into computers. I'm not far of theirs, but I don't think Best Buy should be singled out for this incident, as this could have happened at any nearly retail outlet. Heck, I've heard about wait staff at restaurants stealing credit card numbers.

Besides, this isn't really an identity theft, it's a credit card number theft. An identity theft is more about stealing personal information and applying for a new credit account or loan that the person wouldn't know about for a while.

From the news article:

"He informed me that I was not the only case, that there are several other cases pinning the same associate,” Diaz said of the alleged identity theft."

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BY sfsuphysics:

If the big company who doesn't want any bad press and has really nothing to gain by stepping forward with information comes forward with information then the person will be charged with a crime.

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I'm not sure what you mean with this statement. Is it that it's pathetic that the police need Best Buy to cooperate or what?

Besides, this isn't really an identity theft, it's a credit card number theft.

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You are correct, this is actually Credit Card Fraud.

Had this type of thing happen at a Home Depot. When you apply for a HD CC, they print it on their printer. Oddly, that same day I had a bunch of fraudulent charges - reported it and they were reversed. I've always assumed that some employee printed 2 copies off.

Spidey329 said:

Had this type of thing happen at a Home Depot. When you apply for a HD CC, they print it on their printer. Oddly, that same day I had a bunch of fraudulent charges - reported it and they were reversed. I've always assumed that some employee printed 2 copies off.

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Depends a lot of printers have web servers that can be accessed over the internet.

People can easily have bots check the print buffer for credit card info and the read it.

My wife is paranoid to use her credit card online, but she'll gladly hand it over and let the Applebee's waitress walk off with it for 5 minutes.

lcpiper said:

I'm not sure what you mean with this statement. Is it that it's pathetic that the police need Best Buy to cooperate or what?

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Yes that. Here's a guy who basically says "that guy stole from me" but they won't do anything until they hear he stole from more people.

The stupid person here is Best Buy...in fact most corporate security is a joke. Years ago I worked at a retail chain similar to best buy and some of the employees there too pull thefts like that too. False returns, deliberate inventory mistakes, skimming the till, etc. Eventually they were discovered, but corporate never caught on until way too late. I knew I guy who had been doing false returns for 2 years before HQ realized something was wrong. Dimwits.

The fact is corporations, especially huge retail chains are lazy and sloppy. It makes it easy for con artists/thieves to operate with internally and externally.

I worked retail for 7 years, including 2 at Best Buy, before I got into computers. I'm not far of theirs, but I don't think Best Buy should be singled out for this incident, as this could have happened at any nearly retail outlet. Heck, I've heard about wait staff at restaurants stealing credit card numbers.

Besides, this isn't really an identity theft, it's a credit card number theft. An identity theft is more about stealing personal information and applying for a new credit account or loan that the person wouldn't know about for a while.

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I agree..At CC when we were running promotions for customer's who opened a new CC card, once the credit appilcation came back, we simply printed out a temporary slip with the customer's account information on it for them to use until their card arrived in 2 weeks..

One could easily walk away from the POS terminal, come back and wake it up by logging back in and reprint the information if you never exited the credit application the first time..If you were careful, and did it fairly quickly from the time you first ran the application, I could see it getting by the Management. If you were questioned you could simply say the customer asked for a second copy or the first copy didn't come out legible (we used these shitty thermal printers) etc etc..

mmarsh said:

The stupid person here is Best Buy...in fact most corporate security is a joke. Years ago I worked at a retail chain similar to best buy and some of the employees there too pull thefts like that too. False returns, deliberate inventory mistakes, skimming the till, etc. Eventually they were discovered, but corporate never caught on until way too late. I knew I guy who had been doing false returns for 2 years before HQ realized something was wrong. Dimwits.

The fact is corporations, especially huge retail chains are lazy and sloppy. It makes it easy for con artists/thieves to operate with internally and externally.

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Funny, when I worked for CircuitCity (hence my username although I worked there back in '99~2001) they took fraud/shrinkage to Nazi like levels..I worked in the store for about ~8 months before I turned 18 (had to be 18 to work as an installer due to OSHA regs) and if you went into the Warehouse without one of the 4 workers knowing it they would flip the fuck out on you...

The WH manager was paranoid, I was told he once threw a guy up against the wall because he went into the WH to get a customer's computer since there was a long line and then mouthed off to the manager..

We had to due "cycle counts" at the beginning of every month, which meant coming in early, having to clock in (while working solely on commission) and do inventory checks on things all while having the WH workers standing over us like prison guards..It was especially worse for my dept since there were only 3 12V (car audio) sales reps and 2 were required to do the count so there was a 66% chance I was going to be one of them..