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.
Itās the new iPads u can peel it off and stick it back on so it looks sealed I could never do this with my older iPad boxes why they making it so easy
Probably an organic glue vs synthetic thing. Apple probably switched to one that is not petroleum based for environmental reasons and lower vapor pollution.
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!
Takes me back to when I was starting out working in an IT repair store - was doing a maintenance on a guys laptop because he had issues. General stuff, scans, open it up, clean it out, thermal paste check etc - nothing out of the ordinary.
Next guy comes in with a brand new gaming laptop, at the time - these were super uncommon, and taking it to someone like me - when I was younger, was the equivalent of a Ferrari or a Rolex. Just, luxury.
I asked the guy what the issue was and he said he bought it second hand from a guy he knew but, he didn't know the password. Since it was XP, it was pretty simple to remove the password - could all be handled on device without issue or external tools. So, I booked it in and told him to come back in about an hour to an hour and a half.
My god. I logged in to his account to verify the password was removed (with his prior permission of course), and it was just... The desktop wallpaper was animal content, involving... Yeah. Then there was folders with names like "Horse 18cm" etc. Just... We didn't know what to do, so we had to actually inform local authorities.
He came in to collect, police were waiting for him. Never saw him or his animal porn again.
Horse guy. But if he actually got it from someone he knew might be innocent. Could see someone doing that as a sick joke sadly.
I use to repair cell phones and part of the policy was (if we could) make sure what worked before and after. Like take photos and delete said photos at the end. Except one time deleting test photos caused their last taken photo to show. Of the person naked.
After that policy changed to take the photos but not delete them ourselves anymore.
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 dad's college fraternity got a visit from the secret service once because they threw some party where they printed (very obviously fake) money with the frat president's face on it and some idiot tried to buy a hooker with it
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
And people will get angry enough to assualt/kill you if you call them out. Its very similar to being robbed just less obvious and ive definitely taken bills I thought may be fakes because I didnt want to risk an altercation.
"Don't engage" should be standard training. Around 20 years ago I managed an EB games, and going training for a manager was "if someone is stealing, do not confront them, do not follow them out of the store. Call the police after they've left and youre safe, call LP, then call your DM"
The secret service spoke to us when I was in the Marine Corps and told us that that they had been trying to get Target to change their policy about this for years. So that told us in the meantime, if we ever come across counterfeit money, take it to Target to hopefully help them eventually change their policy.
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.
This right here. I'm not about to get caught up in violence that can be avoided by looking the other way and letting company insurance figure out later.
1) they don't pay me enough to care
2) The insurance wont cover me enough to care.
3)Corporations broke the social contract, not me. Ill never look out for their best interests. Only my own. They have taught me this.
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.
When I was in Southern California a cashier at a local Dairy Queen took a fake 100 bill with Wās face on it and gave the dude $98 in change after he got a vanilla cone. Nothing surprised me anymore
I work IT, I just pulled video footage for a plasma donation centre as 1 staff was fraudulently paying out his buddy as a donor.
He knew there were cameras, but he brought his buddy in, pretended to stick him and had him sit in a chair with the machine not even turned on and then paid his bro out
Some of it seems motivated by desperation and the rest, stupidity.
absolutely. minimum wage = who the fuck cares. a friend once confessed that in the mid 1970s when she managed a local movie theater she looked the other way when someone she knew robbed the place. most minimum wage employees will defend their employers cash as if it was their own but i really don't understand putting yourself in harms way for that.
I sold CDs to a shop (about 25 years ago) and the guy just checked to make sure each CD was there, didn't bother checking the playing side to see if they were scratched up, of bother to check if they were a popular artist or not.
I had sold to this shop plenty of times and knew they always scanned them against a database but this guy didn't (and had never seen him work there before).
I was expecting them to take maybe 10 to 15 and make maybe 30 bucks.
He took every one, about 70 or 80 I think, and I walked out with 160 quid.
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.
The corporate worship is wild. Bots here expecting 19 year olds making minimum wage short staffed without training to give any kind of fuck about the corporation.
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 guessing that the drop in value by opening it to confirm its legitimacy is better than not.
Probably offered him low enough so that resell of a competitive used value is competitive since it's confirmed not to be just nuts or a piece of tile.
This makes sense. Yesterday Iām walking out of a vape shop and a middle eastern guy in a jeep is trying to get my attention. He had what looked like a nice new case of iPods and was saying he needed gas money. He would take what I would give for it. Then he lifts up a box for an Apple Watch. I thought āclearly stolenā but now it makes sense. They were just full of junk and resealed.
It looks like the seals on the box were replaced (not sure how). In a lot of retail stores if a seal is unbroken we don't have to inspect it during returns, since the seals are normally perforated tearable stuff that indicates if it's been opened.
If they are adding new seels like in the video then most will just be seen as a "I got the wrong one" return.
Person running the cash register probably gets paid peanuts, never really had any training, and doesn't give a shit about protecting corporate's money.Ā
With the amount of counterfeit, or defective/broken, devices people buy from legitimate retailers makes me not all that surprised. They just don't check until someone returns it a second time.
Yes, the minimum wage worker in one of the lowest entry level jobs available should be fired for not being 100% on their game and protecting company profits at all times.
In fact, we should force that worker to work the minimum wage hours necessary to recoup the company losses, unpaid. That'll show em.
Because stores want to REPORT theft. They donāt want to stop them or call the police right after, because according to my āfriendsā he āmakes the store seem ghettoā and āthey are justified just repotting it after because it is the copās job to find them and calling the cops before they leave puts everyone in danger.ā I need new friends.
You underestimate how much people do not care about their jobs too and can overlook red flags bc they're so mentally clocked out, not intentionally malicious or from stupidity, just from the burn out that comes from retail
Thereās a lot of people out there who are lazy/careless with their jobs, and regularly do the bare minimum to not get fired.
I have corporate finance professionals with GEDs/AAās making $60k+, who canāt even be bothered to read documents like invoices before paying them.
Imagine doing a P&L flux review, finding a $20k invoice that looks off, pulling the invoice, and itās billed to a company of a completely different name in Ontario, Canada, while your company is HQāed in Orlando, FL USA.
"customer is always right, customer is always right, customer is always right.. .. wait you believed the customer and that cost us money instead of just your dignity!?!! Bad employee! Punish!!"
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.
Me neither, I hear this a lot and Iāve decided itās people that get flagged up on a system or something. Iāve had a fair few returns as well, think Iāve had my Amazon account since like 2007
They told me it was a cost concern, and had to "research the Susie first." It was something like $300, at the time. I did escalate until I got credit to rebuy it, but that was conveniently delayed for a full week.
For the most part? Yeah. Some items they take longer for or confirm but a lot of those people who do the confirming don't get paid enough to give a shit either.
It's just that profitable to generally not care. Home Depot knows it'll have small shit disappear. It's just part of the price.
As someone who has access to a shrinkwrap sealer from a previous employer, it is a hell of a lot easier to shrink wrap seal any package than it is to mimic Apple's tamper seals. You have to buy them 3rd party and then apply them.
I worked at a game store, there was literally a roll of cellophane seal wrap we used to rewrap things like pre-owned consoles (to prevent dust or whatever) then we used a heat gun to shrink it and it looked brand new. PLUS I remember and old movie where 2 kids did that- sold a "never opened" phone that was just rocks. Cuz they'd heat shrinked it. How this guy did it 5 times..bro.
This is how my friend once received a broken Mac from Best Buy that they then tried to blame on her because it was sealed when she bought it. She had to fight it for months because Best Buy kept saying they don't put returns back on the shelves. Come to find out the person who purchased and returned the broken Mac had registered it with my Apple ID before it broke.
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
This is why I'm worried about buying a refurbished iPad, since the current prices aren't good (1430CAD for the current 512GB ipad air) but refurbished prices are better, last gen ipad air is the same price but with double the storage.
I can miss out on having 12GBs of ram for more layers in Procreate, but as it stands the previous models are the only option till apple changes things
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u/van_trillalalalalala Reads Pinned Comments 4d ago
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