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Feature: Teens scamming supermarkets

By FRANK SCHNAUE, Special to UPI

NEW YORK, July 22 (UPI) -- With thousands of teens unable to find work this summer, some have opted to go over to the wrong side of the law with a scam that targets consumers and supermarkets as the youngsters attempt to cope with their financial needs.

A recent trip to a Walbaum's, which is owned by The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. with stores throughout New York area, found several young college students, with clipboards, checking out shoppers in a Patchogue, Long Island parking lot.

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The out-of-work students, with very "legal" looking letters attached to their clipboards, were asking busy weekend shoppers for their cash register receipts, which they claimed were going to be used by a local charity to help raise money for the needy.

One of the students, 19-year old Jerry Metcalf, also known as Jack Murphy and Jerry Murray, said, "I have been looking for work for the past seven months. I have been to all the local fast food chains, supermarkets, malls and I still can't find a job that pays minimum wage."

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Metcalf explained, "I'm frustrated, so I got together with three other students in the same financial boat as myself and we came up with a plan as to how we could get a little cash. What is really great is that nobody is getting hurt."

Their plan, or scam, is to ask busy shoppers exiting the stores with loaded carts on Saturday and Sunday mornings, as well as early weekday evenings, for their cash register receipts and then have the shoppers sign or print their name on the letter attached to the clip board. "That makes it look very official," Metcalf explained.

"We never work during the afternoon or late night because the stores are not as busy. The more shoppers in a store, the better the chance we have to score," he said.

What these teens are really doing is very simple -- they are shoplifting, stealing, ripping off the consumer and the store and all future shoppers.

And, even though experts said most shoplifters in supermarkets go after particular types of products such as health and beauty care, meat, analgesics, razor blades and baby formula, these teens are hitting the higher priced items and are walking out of the stores with large amounts of real cash and not the goods.

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Metcalf said: "On a good day, if I visit six stores, I can make over $100."

Some of the group's other favorite stores included, Pathmark, Super Saver, Shopright, Stop & Shop, King Kullen and Sam's Club. "But, Sam's is not really good for us because too many shoppers use checks and credit card at their stores," the teen said.

For obvious reasons Metcalf did not disclose their entire operation, but the tall, green-eyed, slender student did explain he takes the best receipt into the store, searches for the largest priced items on the piece of paper, such as a large imported olive oil, removes the item from the shelves, places it into one of the store's plastic bags and a shopping cart and then returns the item for cash with the cash register receipt they got from the consumer in the parking lot.

"I tell the cashier, my mother or father asked me to return the item because it was not needed," Metcalf said.

According to experts that track the supermarket industry many of the legal returns and other items actually accumulate through out the store in a given day because honest returns are very common.

The cashiers usually are the ones to put these away when there is down-time. With perishables most clerks would just do the "feel test" or if it feels cold then they put it back on the shelf but if it feels warm they will mark it damaged and it will not be put it back on the shelf.

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Metcalf said: "I know a large number of stores that do not even require a receipt for items under $10 ...so sometimes we set up shop with a box outside a store and ask shoppers for a canned gift for the needy. Then we return the goods to another store with the same name for a few extra dollars. However you got to remember that supermarkets are also becoming more high tech. If they want to investigate if they did in fact sell you the item they probably could. We can make up to an extra $40 bucks for the refunds."

In big chain stores all transactions are stored in the computers and they can be called up by your card number, check number, time and day of your order, or the manager can do a search and see if they actually sold this item when you say they did.

"This is why we must be careful with high priced items and operate at one store at a time," the teen said.

"Loss prevention continues to be a top priority for all food retail and wholesale companies," commented MaryAnn House-Abate, senior director of loss prevention services at the Food Marketing Institute.

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The FMI said shoplifting continues to be one of the most common and costly types of loss for food retailers. The group said last year 227,860 shoplifters were apprehended in almost 14,000 stores. The value of merchandise recovered per incident averaged $45.27, totaling approximately $9.2 million.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that 6 percent of supermarket revenues will be lost as a result of fraud and abuse.

According to the association, the average fraud scheme lasts about 18 months before it is detected. That means if the shopping lot bandits continue their scam for 18 months, they would have walked out the stores with more than $127,256 in cash, unless they find an honest job or another scam.

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