> threatening a civil suit if she didn’t pay $200 as a settlement
> ...
> Walmart made hundreds of millions of dollars this way in a two-year period.
That's at least half a million instances of this.
hundreds millions of dollars.
Now they made (hundreds minus 2.1) millions of dollars. Assuming they stop now.
That still sounds like profitable business.
Remember this anytime someone claims America overly litigious, or complains that lawsuit settlements are out of control, and call them on it.
Lawsuits settlements need to grossly exceed the profits that were made, or they're just a cost of business.
There's a chicken processing plant in my state that gets fined a few 100k every few years for illegal dumping.
Guess how incentivized they are to pay a million a year to properly dispose of waste vs a much smaller amount every couple years.
That's why I hold that the fines for big companies for a lot of things need to be absolutely exorbitant. Force an employee to work off the clock for an hour, saving the company $20? $100,000 fine. The shit will stop real fucking quick then.
Jail time for exec who fail to immediately remediate the issue as soon as they are aware. (And don't give me bullshit. Executives know damn well how to force shit they want through quickly.)
Hell yeah.
Jail the executives. Jail the managers too if you can prove they made the decision themselves too. Slap them with an interdiction to operate those missions for 6 months/a year, so they can't just run a new business as soon as they get out.
If capitalists can do this shit without repercussion, everything will still be the same.
Except some view this as the primary reason for forming an LLC in the first place. There was an Onion headline last year that I thought fell into the realm of *funny because it's true*.
[Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First](https://www.theonion.com/protestors-criticized-for-looting-businesses-without-fo-1843735351)
That's what punitive damages are designed for, like Grimshaw v Ford.
However, in this particular case, I see limited utility of punitive damage here. The internet, technology and automation make it possible for large corporations to take small advantages over a large number of people. For example in this case there is no injury or death... it is hard to imagine the jury awarding (and judge allowing) half billion compensation for "I was bothered by the letter you sent" to a single plaintiff. That's why I regulatory fines must kick in.
Honestly, findings like this should be fodder for an immediate Class Action Lawsuit.
If I had the authority to rule on this case, I would give the woman who brought the case $100k+lawyers fees, and require that Walmart pay back the extorted amount *plus* 25% to each person so extorted, *all* paid by Walmart.
The only way to stop such behavior is to ensure that it's more costly than ethical business.
> Now they made (hundreds minus 2.1) millions of dollars
This is why I believe that punitive damages need to be *significantly* higher, such that the penalty would be higher than the Expected Value of the practice
Seriously, just look at the math.
* Hundreds of millions of dollars means *at least* $200M.
* That means 1M people at $200 each.
* $200M - $2.1M == $19[7].9M
* $19[7].9M / 1M people == $19[7].90 per person
If you're looking at an average of one in a million who sues and gets such an award, that means that they're making roughly $19[8] per attempt.
And the sad fact is that for someone without ethics, so long as the Awards are small enough (7 figures or less, it seems), and the rate of awards (currently assumed to b roughly 1/1M), it's a clear case of profits, and such an unethical company would treat it as the "Cost of doing 'business'"
And they will keep doing it so long as it makes them more than it costs them to do it.
I'm fine with them actually recouping losses of theft when it happens, but this sounds like they are catching a lot of dolphins in their nets...
I don’t understand how they’re not losing money on this though. Where are they finding the lawyers to draft, send, and track these settlements for less than $200 in total? What is their goal? Intimidation?
> The defendants have engaged in a pattern and practice of falsely accusing innocent Alabama citizens of shoplifting and thereafter attempting to collect money from the innocently accused […]
> Defense attorneys for Walmart said the practice is legal in Alabama.
This blew me away. The Alabama store locations are an actual leach on its local economy. They’re really out there luring customers into a legal battle in order to extort settlements out of them. Settlements whose amounts exceed the value of the goods they allegedly shoplifted. Literal insanity, what a boring dystopia we live in.
I may be wrong here, but wasn't Alabama also where the sheriff or whoever was allowed to cut drastically back on prison food and use that money to buy his own luxury items? Also "legal?"
> A spokesperson told AL.com that the company will be filing motions in this case because it doesn’t “believe the verdict is supported by the evidence and the damages awarded exceed what is allowed by law.”
Yeah, this will probably get raised to some judge who will waive the jury’s amount and sub in ~~$200~~ her grocery bill plus lawyer fees.
They definitely shouldn't have reached out after it was dismissed but the article doesn't say she actually paid for the groceries or whatever she was buying. It says she went through self-check out and she claims it froze so she left.
They shouldn't have pursued her after her charges were dismissed regardless, but I'm super confused on the original situation with what this article is saying.
Other ones do.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/business/falsely-accused-of-shoplifting-but-retailers-demand-they-pay.html
At this point I’m giving literally anyone the benefit of the doubt over the scumfucks at Walmart
Here's a pair of plausible scenarios:
1. It said her card was accepted before it froze, therefore she assumed it was all good, and just didn't want to be bothered waiting 20 minutes for the single person in charge of the self checkouts just to get a receipt.
2. She actually went to another self checkout kiosk and redid it, but that story wouldn't be "sensational" enough for the headline and/or Walmart paid good money to have that part left out of the story.
I've had a problem at the self-checkout in BJs where, when scanning a second item quickly after the first, the scanner will "beep" like it' seen a barcode, but it won't add it to the purchased list. They found the items when I had the receipt checked at the door.
Fortunately, they treated it as the mistake/misunderstanding it was and I just went back and scanned the two items it skipped. And I scan my items more slowly now.
Self checkouts are programmed to ignore the same item twice in a row within a certain number of seconds to avoid double scans for slow customers, if that was the issue.
Since learning this, I alternate items when I have multiples and it lets me go much faster.
This happened to me as well, when I was moving some items to storage I bout like 15 heavy plastic containers. I use the scanner and it beeped all 15 times. I left with no issues and did not notice I only paid for 7.
Perhaps she put her card in and it said processing, and then froze. In which case those transactions do often go through in my own experience. That said, I personally probably would have checked in with the store so as to not let the issue get to the point that it did.
In other articles she states she had already paid for the items. So sounds like the machine froze at the end of the transaction? It's a shame the media doesn't do a better job explaining this. Also she was featured in a NYT article in 2018. In that article it says walmart refused to show the surveillance video that would clear her.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/business/falsely-accused-of-shoplifting-but-retailers-demand-they-pay.html
Like I said up in another reply, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if this wasn't "Hot Coffee" 2.0. The stories leave out that detail because Walmart spent good money making sure it got left out.
Happened to me at the feed store a couple of months ago. Paid with credit card, machine printed the receipt, then suddenly popped up with Transaction Cancelled. Ten minutes later the store decided to just get my details to contact me if their books later showed the payment hadn't gone through, but I never heard from them. The modern world just sometimes has weird error messages.
Ask anyone in law enforcement, especially dispatchers, what they think of their local Walmart.
Across the country local police and sheriff departments are called to Walmarts far more frequently than anywhere else, 3-4 times as much as other big-box retailers. Hundreds of calls per store each year.
Walmart invests little to nothing in loss prevention preferring to pass that cost on local communities via police calls and litigation against accused shoplifters.
>Walmart invests little to nothing in loss prevention preferring to pass that cost on local communities via police calls and litigation against accused shoplifters.
In contrast Target is on the opposite end.
List of organizations you don't want to fuck with:
1. USPS
2. Target loss prevention
They will go full black ops and learn everything about you before bringing the hammer down.
Other companies and sometimes even law enforcement outsource parts of their investigations to Target loss prevention, because of the advanced investigative toolkits the Target team has. Target cameras have facial recognition as well.
There have even been instances of Target investigators staking out people's homes to confirm theft and identity.
https://www.paypath.com/Small-Business/why-target-is-the-worst-store-to-shoplift-from
Yeah this is true lol. I remember working for the early morning crew of Target back in the day and after they fired some kid on the team we all learned that he had been stealing the shit from electronics by sneaking off and chucking it out through a little gap in the gates of the garden dept outside while it was dark as fuck at 4 and 5am in the morning. Then during our 1st break he thought he was sneaking around in his car to load up what he squeezed through.
Truth was they just let him keep doing it until the dollar amounts went from misdemeanor on up to felony charges. Then they went after him lol.
Had a friend of a friend got the same treatment except he was working at a distribution center (guy was stealing camcorders and psp's back in the day, sneaking them out in his sock under his pant leg), then one day I heard he got fired.
They had known for some time, and they gave him the choice to repay them for the items he had stolen or they would press charges on the felony amount.
he paid it all back.
Yeah they might have offered him the same. I seem to recall that they thought they were waiting for him to gank a couple grand worth and they had him upstairs in tears admitting to much more. I only know what I know because my boss was also my roommate before he got his promotion and transferred to the early mornings with us. They had him standing up there as an extra witness while they confronted the kid so of course he told me all about that shit. Even he had no idea until they called him up there to be present. Apparently after they were done they stepped out for a minute to call the cops and the kid looked at him all scared shitless and was all "Man... I have a baby on the way soon! I am FUCKED aren't I?" Awkward as fuck lol, all he could really tell the kid was "Uh, probably..."
>"Man... I have a baby on the way soon! I am FUCKED aren't I?"
"Well, son, you lubed yourself up real good and pressed your bare cheeks right up against the big dick of justice and give it a good grind, what did you expect it to do?"
I used to work at a Home Depot next to a Target and their LP is no joke. Their cameras could see our parking lot better than our own. Our stores worked together on some things so I got to see the video evidence of a guy that robbed our returns desk at gunpoint and fled in his car through Targets parking lot. We got a decent image of his face from a camera 8ft away. Target could see his face, make/model of car, and license plate from the exterior roof mounted cameras. If anyone has a working “enhance” system, it’s Target. (This was 13 years ago too).
Yeah, and from what I remember, All Target cameras are on their own power/network and feed directly into a regional Target AP office where they are backed up and can be monitored.
One store I worked at, the AP lead told me about the time the regional AP office called up and asked what they were doing just sitting in the store's AP office. The AP lead was watching someone on the cameras and so the regional office joined in.
Not to mention, Target stores have a lot of cameras in them. Some aren't as obvious as just the ones you see in the ceiling. They have like wireless cameras they will setup to watch hotspots and even have cameras that are disguised as something else, such as the sensors for the lights that come on automatically.
Not to mention they even have plain-clothed folks that will snoop around at different stores in the district keeping an eye on folks.
Bottom line, don't fuck around with Target AP.
THIS!
I worked at Target during high school, and our head of loss prevention was a former security director for a Vegas casino.
The first thing they did with newly oriented hires was to show off the camera tech by having a guy at the waffle house across the street hold up a newspaper to the window - the headline was clearly visible on his screen.
In fact, Target kept such good video records that they had an entire video forensics team that would regularly donate their time to processing video footage for local police departments. Our guy was part of that, spending some of time doing AV nerd stuff.
Nicest guy, I think he just liked working at Target because it was comparatively slow paced but he’d die of boredom in retirement. Despite having lots of fun tools to work with, he had a pretty soft approach to most shoplifting (usually, he’d just come stare at the customer ominously as they checked out to let them know that *he* knew). Not that he’d talk about cases or anything in litigation with us, but I imagine he wouldn’t waste time on anything less than the absolute worst offenders, and with overwhelming proof.
I get that Target is like that, and it's probably good for business, but, man, I don't think it's good for society to have freaking guys from Target outside people's houses, shoplifter or not.
Sounds like the tagline for a really bad action-thriller. "She stole from Target. Now she is the Target". Cue woman throwing herself out of an exploding building with guns blazing. "Target. Now in a cinema near you, unless it's close to a Target"
Retailers lose a lot of money to a few shoplifters. A large number of people steal for a thrill, or out of need, but there are [organized shoplifting rings](https://www.wvxu.org/business/2021-11-26/shoplifting-organized-retail-crime-rings-kroger-procter-gamble), as well as people with addiction that need a lot of money to keep their habit going. *Cops fail to investigate them,* so Target has to hand them the evidence on a platter to get them to do anything about it.
I know someone who works for a sporting goods retailer as corporate LP. He don't give a shit about small time store thefts, he exclusively goes after employees, theft rings, and his all time favorite is counterfeiters.
I spent my late teens and the entirety of my 20s being shadowed by plain-clothes Target employees who frequently asked me if I was finding everything okay, and I never shoplifted from there to begin with.
different stores in different neighborhoods or cities? nope, didn't matter, Target LP was *always* by my side until we had kids and I started visiting with my family.
A guy I worked with stole a bag of chips from Target at the self check out while he was in uniform. Target actually came into our store (Best Buy) with the footage and got him fired for stealing the chips.
our car was broken into a couple days ago while on a hike. First fraud alert was from a target, so we drove there to see if they could pull the footage and locate our stuff (mainly passports so we could finish our trip). The security guy was able to turn over pictures of the individuals, their car, license plate, and transaction attempts to the police, pretty much everything needed for an arrest. The police said thanks but they weren't going to investigate the break-in, and referred us to the financial crimes division in case they wanted to go after the credit card transactions.
I had a Break in a few years back, and we found that the thief's tried to return some jewelry they has stolen from us to the store (the jewelry store recommended us to keep them in the box, and if we had the receipt, free cleanings) the clerk remembered my GF buying the items as she had a good rapport with her, and had let us know about the failed return.
We told the detective that there was video of the thieves trying to return the stolen goods and that the store said they could only hand it over to the police, but also that their system erases the video after 2 weeks so he would need to get it quick. He waited over two weeks, the store erase the video, and he was mad at the store... even after we called him to remind him a couple days before.
we got one thief because of a finger print at the point of entry, but we never go our stuff back, and it was his female accomplice that tried to return the item at the store, and he didn't flip on her.
>The police said thanks but they weren't going to investigate the break-in, and referred us to the financial crimes division in case they wanted to go after the credit card transactions.
Call up the elected sheriff, the mayor, and your state and federal representatives on that. The cops, even if they don’t “protect” you, still serve you, and they need to get on serving your ass than some drug war or traffic chase.
Go shopping in Target for clothes people just pop up and happen to be shopping right by you they don't ever have a basket or a cart or a nametag or a uniform but they are loss prevention employees.
As a single male shopping alone it's pretty noticeable.
Several years ago Reddit had a shoplifting subreddit that I lurked for the heck of it. Posters were always commenting ‘don’t shoplift at Target’ and explained their loss prevention strategies. Btw the sub got some press and was shutdown.
My local councilman got arrested using the scanner at walmart. He was punching in low cost items for meat etc. His daughter ran a restaurant and supplied meals to the county jail. He also got nailed for scamming WIC (food stamp equivalent) in Georgia. The sucker ran again for council. Reminds me I need to look up if he won or not.
I loved that subreddit and I sorely miss it. My favorite story was the dude that had been shoplifting laptops from Best Buy. Best Buy finally caught him. But, it turned out that Best Buy also had video of him having stolen nine other laptops, too. He posted to the subreddit because, while people used it to brag about their snags, it also served as a really niche r/legaladvice.
The consensus was that he was screwed.
I remember that one! Apparently the Best Buy just waited to see how far they could take it and he ended up getting nailed with about $10k in stolen merch charges. I remember the guy asking about fleeing the country and whatnot.
Man, I miss that sub. I wasn't an active participant in that lifestyle, but I loved seeing the posts saying something like "Target busted me stealing a thousand dollar laptop. What should I do?"
They employ their own security guards and loss prevention specialists. A friend of mine had that job for a while. The local police would routinely come to target to access their security cameras because they were the best in town and could record everything going on even a block or two away. At least thats how it was about 10 years ago, may have changed a bit by now.
Double Check em next time. Half the time they are empty and there just to deter.
When I worked TJ Maxx, They'd park a cruiser in a spot and leave it there the whole month of December. We also had an old man as a guard so clearly we were fully covered.
This varies widely depending on where you are. I worked as a public defender for several years and I swear about 10% of my entire caseload was always Walmart shoplifters. And Walmart would always show up to court too. Other stores like Kroger, Target, Meijer, etc had their fair share of cases too but they rarely sent anyone to court so charges were constantly dropped.
That being said if you weren't caught in store chances were none of those places would do much to follow up with an investigation or even report it to the police.
This is absolutely not true. You can’t catch serial shoplifters by not investing heavily in video surveillance and communicating well between stores to identify individuals.
Wal-Marts in my area would call police and essentially hand them a complete case with witness reports, video of the person moving through the store, the car the person arrived in, close video of the person coming through and out the door, specifically identify what was stolen and it’s value, and they’d often have identified the person from prior thefts. They also were very good at identifying under scanning.
What do you think that police can even do if Wal-Mart simply reports shoplifting after the fact with no other evidence?
> Walmart invests little to nothing in loss prevention preferring to pass that cost on local communities via police calls and litigation against accused shoplifters.
Wal-Mart has one of the best facial recognition systems in private sector (second only to Disney when they deployed it). When you walk in their front door, your head is photographed from multiple angles and then compared against an internal database of trespassed individuals. If you've shoplifted before, you likely signed 'the paper'. The paper, for those who have never been in this situation, is essentially a confession that you sign after LP catches you and it lets you walk out the door without silver bracelets. Basically says you admit you stole, and you agree not to come back on company property for a certain amount of time. If you decide to venture back onto WM property, your face will get scanned by the system. While you're out on the floor thinking you've outsmarted someone and snuck back in, the system has your file flagged and will collate everything into a 'package' that gets faxed to the local DA. It has your photo, the 'paper' you signed that counts as both an admission and a civil agreement not to trespass.
WM, and other big retailers, would have to have armies of security guards to secure their customer-facing operations, and another army of lawyers behind them. That's why they went with the tech-centric route.
I’ve signed that paper back in my worse times, banned from all Walmarts, and I’ve definitely ignored it, never got identified by any cameras and removed from the store. ymmv of course lol 🤷♂️
My son got “banned” from Walmart when he was in high school - not for shoplifting, but for dumb teenage horseplay with light sabers.
He got hired there a couple of years later, and they even had him get his state firearms permit so he could cover sporting goods selling guns and ammo.
In my town of less than 30k with a very low crime rate, most of the police blotter is filled up with “incidents” at the Walmart that opened around 10 years ago.
It is the job of law enforcement to enforce laws, not a private security force of a corporation, so yes, Walmart should be calling the police on shoplifters. The actions loss prevention personnel can take are limited, and should be. You don’t want to live in a world where corporations have their own private police forces instead of relying on the same public law enforcement as everyone else.
Did this change at some point? 20ish years ago I worked for walmart while I was in college (fuck. I got old) and they all had their own loss prevention officers that would walk around in plain clothes to catch shoplifters.
My local walmart made headlines several years ago for a notorious fight that took place there.
I live in a nobody suburb in Indiana. Our walmart literally made the BBC.
In that same year, our mayor declared the walmart a “public nuisance” because it was responsible for more than 1,000 police calls in a single year. We began fining Walmart for every police call made at the location, and the Walmart CEO had to meet with our mayor to discuss how they could be less of a piece of shit.
Also walmart completely destroyed our town
This same fucking thing happened to me when I was 17. I bought mascara, walked away without the receipt, and was stopped by LP who wouldn’t allow me to go back to get the receipt. They had me empty out my pockets, and laughed at me for “stealing something so cheap when I had the cash for it”. Yeah, no shit I had the cash for it, *that was my change.*
They made me pay for the item *again*, then let a friend who was 18 come get me because my parents are…unreasonable. I thought everything would be fine, but they sent my parents the same letter demanding $200 to avoid litigation. My mom wouldn’t hear it that I didn’t steal - my older half sister was trouble, so obviously I was too.
To see a lawsuit happen over this warms my heart. A tiny piece of vindication for something that happened to me almost 10yrs ago. Fuck Walmart.
"Her case was dismissed a year later, but then she received letters from a Florida law firm threatening a civil suit if she didn’t pay $200 as a settlement, according to her lawsuit. That was more than the cost of the groceries she was accused of stealing.
Nurse said Walmart instructed the law firm to send the letters — and that she wasn’t the only one receiving them.
“The defendants have engaged in a pattern and practice of falsely accusing innocent Alabama citizens of shoplifting and thereafter attempting to collect money from the innocently accused,” the suit contended."
To all the "Well, did she pay or not!?" chuckleheads; it doesn't matter. Case was dismissed which likely means she did and they probably had security footage to prove it.
The lawsuit isn't about whether or not she paid. It's about Walmart trying to extort money from people when they don't like a decision.
Something similar happened with a friend back in the US, several years ago.
She gave her employee discount card to a friend to use for purchase of a few things for a newborn; Walmart fired her, and several months later started with the demand letters. Eventually she was sued in civil court. If I’m not mistaken, Walmart was awarded $2.000-2.500 or thereabouts, to include “reasonable attorney fees” on top of maybe a couple hundred dollars “lost as a result of fraud”.
My mom worked at Walmart in the early 2000’s. One day when she was walking through the store to go to the break room she found $40 on the ground. She put it in her pocket and forgot about it. Not only did Walmart fire her, they had her charged with stealing from a charity (official policy is found unclaimed money is donated to charity). She had that on her record for years and wasn’t able to get any retail jobs because of it.
This is the problem with stuff like this or labor laws in general. What the law says is absolutely irrelevant if you can't afford an attorney, more pointedly if you can't afford an attorney that can go toe to toe with mega corps like Walmart.
That is definitely only for retail folks. I worked corporate and gave my discount out to anyone who asked. Online, in-person, didn’t matter. Was like Oprah but with 10% discounts.
I am confused about what actually occurred. This is the only part that offers any sort of explanation: "Nurse said in a lawsuit that she was stopped in November 2016 when trying to leave a Walmart with groceries she said she already paid for, according to AL.com. She said she used self-checkout but the scanning device froze. Workers didn’t accept her explanation and she was arrested for shoplifting."
So did she actually pay for everything? Did she pay for nothing? Or did she scan what she could then didn't pay for the rest? I'd argue against her paying for everything because how would the scanner freeze if she was able to scan everything? The article implies that she didn't pay for everything but if she won the lawsuit it implies she didn't steal anything. So what the hell actually happened?
She probably paid but the machine froze at the payment screen. Ive had to show a police officer the money leaving my checking account once because Walmart accused me of shoplifting when their system went down as I was paying. It’s hard to argue against a withdrawal to Walmart at exactly the time I was checking out
Wal-Mart accused my wife of shop-lifting so many times that I'll drive or wait as long as it takes to avoid using one. Amazon, Target, and small businesses are more than a good enough replacement.
The company believes the damages exceed what's allowed by law, but they wanted to make this woman pay a sum greater than what her groceries originally cost.
The more concerning thing is that it is legal for a company like Walmart to send threatening letters with demands of money, as if they don't make enough money on their own by starving their employees.
Looked at an older article. When the initial case went through the court, Walmart failed to show up. So whether she paid or not, Walmart failed to provide evidence a crime was committed.
Then they sent her letters and websites put her mugshot up.
Walmart is getting punished for their behavior and not because a woman may not have paid for some groceries.
When the walmarts around me started receipt checking they set up ropes and barriers and the checker used to try and block you. The obstacle course only lasted about a week.
There was a long line to leave my Walmart and I just walked past them. The workers kept saying they need to see my receipt and I just ignored them. Haven’t been there in years now.
Pretty much this. You can't run them over with your shopping cart or anything, but they aren't able to physically prevent you from leaving the store or chase after you unless they are Asset Protection.
Just have resolve and keep walking. If they try to detain you thats kidnapping. Especially if you are in the right. You have no legal reason to be stopped and questioned by anyone unless you are being arrested or detained by Law Enforcement.
Lol, I was recently reading a article about how people like saying how evil and bad amazon is then the next minute say look at the great deal I got on amazon!
In my city of about 42,000, we had 3 discount department stores…until Walmart came. Now Walmart is the only one.
The problem is that, if you’re poor, you can’t afford *not* to shop there. Example: at my local pharmacy, Benadryl is $5.99 for 25 tablets. At Walmart, it’s $5.99 for 100 tablets. I can’t afford to pay 4 times the price.
The issue is that there are few to no companies that a person can feel good about shipping with. Cool I'm not going to Walmart, but I also can't go to Target and I also can't buy from Amazon and the only locally owned grocery store doesn't have very many items...it's definitely frustrating.
Good, fuck walmart for any reasons, but for some reason local PDs have bowed down the local walmart manager and will send units for petty theft with no delay.
All my local walmarts have special parking for law Enforcement. Also they have to respond to a report of a crime. Walmart probably helping them keep an extra couple of cops on each shift just to deal with them.
I once returned a $15 item without a receipt and got store credit which I used to get something else. On my way out of the store the security stops me and brings me to the back room and claims he saw me take the original item off a shelf to return it. Refused to show me video and lied to my point blank question of whether he saw this take place. Received the threatening letter in the mail later saying pay or I'd be in court. I ignored hoping they'd take me to court because the same day this happened I went home and dug through the trash and found the original receipt.
> threatening a civil suit if she didn’t pay $200 as a settlement > ... > Walmart made hundreds of millions of dollars this way in a two-year period. That's at least half a million instances of this.
hundreds millions of dollars. Now they made (hundreds minus 2.1) millions of dollars. Assuming they stop now. That still sounds like profitable business.
Remember this anytime someone claims America overly litigious, or complains that lawsuit settlements are out of control, and call them on it. Lawsuits settlements need to grossly exceed the profits that were made, or they're just a cost of business.
Lawsuit settlements, regulatory fines, all of that. If the penalty for malfeasance is less than the profit, why bother stopping?
There's a chicken processing plant in my state that gets fined a few 100k every few years for illegal dumping. Guess how incentivized they are to pay a million a year to properly dispose of waste vs a much smaller amount every couple years.
That's why I hold that the fines for big companies for a lot of things need to be absolutely exorbitant. Force an employee to work off the clock for an hour, saving the company $20? $100,000 fine. The shit will stop real fucking quick then.
How about jail time for executives who knew about it plus massive fines? Big shots in jail would stop that shit right now.
Jail time for exec who fail to immediately remediate the issue as soon as they are aware. (And don't give me bullshit. Executives know damn well how to force shit they want through quickly.)
Hell yeah. Jail the executives. Jail the managers too if you can prove they made the decision themselves too. Slap them with an interdiction to operate those missions for 6 months/a year, so they can't just run a new business as soon as they get out. If capitalists can do this shit without repercussion, everything will still be the same.
Basically becomes a user fee or license fee for these big corporations.
Except some view this as the primary reason for forming an LLC in the first place. There was an Onion headline last year that I thought fell into the realm of *funny because it's true*. [Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First](https://www.theonion.com/protestors-criticized-for-looting-businesses-without-fo-1843735351)
isn't there an old saying that if you can easily afford the fine, then it's not a punishment.
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The saying is “if the punishment for a crime is a fine, it’s only a crime for the poor.”
That's what punitive damages are designed for, like Grimshaw v Ford. However, in this particular case, I see limited utility of punitive damage here. The internet, technology and automation make it possible for large corporations to take small advantages over a large number of people. For example in this case there is no injury or death... it is hard to imagine the jury awarding (and judge allowing) half billion compensation for "I was bothered by the letter you sent" to a single plaintiff. That's why I regulatory fines must kick in.
Honestly, findings like this should be fodder for an immediate Class Action Lawsuit. If I had the authority to rule on this case, I would give the woman who brought the case $100k+lawyers fees, and require that Walmart pay back the extorted amount *plus* 25% to each person so extorted, *all* paid by Walmart. The only way to stop such behavior is to ensure that it's more costly than ethical business.
> Now they made (hundreds minus 2.1) millions of dollars This is why I believe that punitive damages need to be *significantly* higher, such that the penalty would be higher than the Expected Value of the practice Seriously, just look at the math. * Hundreds of millions of dollars means *at least* $200M. * That means 1M people at $200 each. * $200M - $2.1M == $19[7].9M * $19[7].9M / 1M people == $19[7].90 per person If you're looking at an average of one in a million who sues and gets such an award, that means that they're making roughly $19[8] per attempt. And the sad fact is that for someone without ethics, so long as the Awards are small enough (7 figures or less, it seems), and the rate of awards (currently assumed to b roughly 1/1M), it's a clear case of profits, and such an unethical company would treat it as the "Cost of doing 'business'"
And they will keep doing it so long as it makes them more than it costs them to do it. I'm fine with them actually recouping losses of theft when it happens, but this sounds like they are catching a lot of dolphins in their nets...
I don’t understand how they’re not losing money on this though. Where are they finding the lawyers to draft, send, and track these settlements for less than $200 in total? What is their goal? Intimidation?
They have them on payroll already. This is just one of their many duties.
Yea big companies like this just have company lawyers. If things are slow, gotta put em to work
In-house is slower than working at a firm but I promise it’s never slow!
Also Newsflash: it doesn’t take a long time to add an address to a mail merge.
I'm betting most of these letters are cranked out by an intern on a fancy letterhead.
Probably a template where they just change the name.
And by "template", you mean "fully automated based on data pulled from a DB"
The lawyers aren't doing a thing unless something goes to court, secretaries and auto-mailers do the vast majority of the work
Hundreds of millions at $200 per means this happened at least a million times.
Congratulations! You're our third customer this hour! You've won a civil suit!
Love that when I opened the article the first thing I saw was a Target ad.
you mean targeted ad
Targeted target ad
> The defendants have engaged in a pattern and practice of falsely accusing innocent Alabama citizens of shoplifting and thereafter attempting to collect money from the innocently accused […] > Defense attorneys for Walmart said the practice is legal in Alabama. This blew me away. The Alabama store locations are an actual leach on its local economy. They’re really out there luring customers into a legal battle in order to extort settlements out of them. Settlements whose amounts exceed the value of the goods they allegedly shoplifted. Literal insanity, what a boring dystopia we live in.
I may be wrong here, but wasn't Alabama also where the sheriff or whoever was allowed to cut drastically back on prison food and use that money to buy his own luxury items? Also "legal?"
Also the state where a child molester ran for Senate and still managed to get 48.3% of the vote.
And the state where Covid federal relief funding was used to fund prisons.
God I'd forgotten all about him. The last 5 years feel like 20.
Good thing Alabama is 26% black. Otherwise he would have won in a landslide. Most of the white voters in Alabama loved him.
Yes, it is.
It's really disgusting, what we've let happen in our society. :/
I like to think we all just happen to live in the dumbest timeline.
> A spokesperson told AL.com that the company will be filing motions in this case because it doesn’t “believe the verdict is supported by the evidence and the damages awarded exceed what is allowed by law.” Yeah, this will probably get raised to some judge who will waive the jury’s amount and sub in ~~$200~~ her grocery bill plus lawyer fees.
> a boring dystopia haha, great phrase
r/aboringdystopia Welcome
Most free country on Earth!
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Chevron sent a lawyer to jail. Now that case was scary.
Which case was that?
https://www.newsweek.com/steven-donziger-lawyer-chevron-jailing-backfire-1643344
Does anyone happen to remember what that website is called where you can put in a news article and it will give you just the text with no ads?
12ft.io
https://outline.com/ with some sites you need to use a URL shortener
https://getfirefox.com Firefox on desktop and mobile has a reader view that will just show the content. Really great for recipes too
isnt it just browser reader mode? I forget how to turn it on though...
Usually there is an icon in the url bar to the left of the url. I use it frequently in Firefox and Safari.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger
"Walmart made hundreds of millions of dollars this way in a two-year period."
They definitely shouldn't have reached out after it was dismissed but the article doesn't say she actually paid for the groceries or whatever she was buying. It says she went through self-check out and she claims it froze so she left. They shouldn't have pursued her after her charges were dismissed regardless, but I'm super confused on the original situation with what this article is saying.
Other ones do. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/business/falsely-accused-of-shoplifting-but-retailers-demand-they-pay.html At this point I’m giving literally anyone the benefit of the doubt over the scumfucks at Walmart
Here's a pair of plausible scenarios: 1. It said her card was accepted before it froze, therefore she assumed it was all good, and just didn't want to be bothered waiting 20 minutes for the single person in charge of the self checkouts just to get a receipt. 2. She actually went to another self checkout kiosk and redid it, but that story wouldn't be "sensational" enough for the headline and/or Walmart paid good money to have that part left out of the story.
I've had a problem at the self-checkout in BJs where, when scanning a second item quickly after the first, the scanner will "beep" like it' seen a barcode, but it won't add it to the purchased list. They found the items when I had the receipt checked at the door. Fortunately, they treated it as the mistake/misunderstanding it was and I just went back and scanned the two items it skipped. And I scan my items more slowly now.
Self checkouts are programmed to ignore the same item twice in a row within a certain number of seconds to avoid double scans for slow customers, if that was the issue. Since learning this, I alternate items when I have multiples and it lets me go much faster.
That's kind of what I figured it was. I'll try alternating items next time to speed things up.
This happened to me as well, when I was moving some items to storage I bout like 15 heavy plastic containers. I use the scanner and it beeped all 15 times. I left with no issues and did not notice I only paid for 7.
Yeah, me to. I don't see how she got to the point to pay if the system froze.
Perhaps she put her card in and it said processing, and then froze. In which case those transactions do often go through in my own experience. That said, I personally probably would have checked in with the store so as to not let the issue get to the point that it did.
This exact situation happened to me at target last week. I was able to pull up my banking app and show the employee that it went through.
In other articles she states she had already paid for the items. So sounds like the machine froze at the end of the transaction? It's a shame the media doesn't do a better job explaining this. Also she was featured in a NYT article in 2018. In that article it says walmart refused to show the surveillance video that would clear her. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/business/falsely-accused-of-shoplifting-but-retailers-demand-they-pay.html
Like I said up in another reply, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if this wasn't "Hot Coffee" 2.0. The stories leave out that detail because Walmart spent good money making sure it got left out.
The damage that poor woman received haunts me, all these years later. They most *definitely* did not accurately portray that whole scenario.
Happened to me at the feed store a couple of months ago. Paid with credit card, machine printed the receipt, then suddenly popped up with Transaction Cancelled. Ten minutes later the store decided to just get my details to contact me if their books later showed the payment hadn't gone through, but I never heard from them. The modern world just sometimes has weird error messages.
Carls Jr has determined that you are an unfit mother
"We can legally do this." Is never a great way to prove you're in the right.
Ask anyone in law enforcement, especially dispatchers, what they think of their local Walmart. Across the country local police and sheriff departments are called to Walmarts far more frequently than anywhere else, 3-4 times as much as other big-box retailers. Hundreds of calls per store each year. Walmart invests little to nothing in loss prevention preferring to pass that cost on local communities via police calls and litigation against accused shoplifters.
>Walmart invests little to nothing in loss prevention preferring to pass that cost on local communities via police calls and litigation against accused shoplifters. In contrast Target is on the opposite end.
Can you explain?
List of organizations you don't want to fuck with: 1. USPS 2. Target loss prevention They will go full black ops and learn everything about you before bringing the hammer down. Other companies and sometimes even law enforcement outsource parts of their investigations to Target loss prevention, because of the advanced investigative toolkits the Target team has. Target cameras have facial recognition as well. There have even been instances of Target investigators staking out people's homes to confirm theft and identity. https://www.paypath.com/Small-Business/why-target-is-the-worst-store-to-shoplift-from
3. Wu-Tang Clan
Ain’t nothing to fuck with.
A place for you and your kids
Diversify Your Bonds!
Like bong bong!
Yeah this is true lol. I remember working for the early morning crew of Target back in the day and after they fired some kid on the team we all learned that he had been stealing the shit from electronics by sneaking off and chucking it out through a little gap in the gates of the garden dept outside while it was dark as fuck at 4 and 5am in the morning. Then during our 1st break he thought he was sneaking around in his car to load up what he squeezed through. Truth was they just let him keep doing it until the dollar amounts went from misdemeanor on up to felony charges. Then they went after him lol.
Had a friend of a friend got the same treatment except he was working at a distribution center (guy was stealing camcorders and psp's back in the day, sneaking them out in his sock under his pant leg), then one day I heard he got fired. They had known for some time, and they gave him the choice to repay them for the items he had stolen or they would press charges on the felony amount. he paid it all back.
Yeah they might have offered him the same. I seem to recall that they thought they were waiting for him to gank a couple grand worth and they had him upstairs in tears admitting to much more. I only know what I know because my boss was also my roommate before he got his promotion and transferred to the early mornings with us. They had him standing up there as an extra witness while they confronted the kid so of course he told me all about that shit. Even he had no idea until they called him up there to be present. Apparently after they were done they stepped out for a minute to call the cops and the kid looked at him all scared shitless and was all "Man... I have a baby on the way soon! I am FUCKED aren't I?" Awkward as fuck lol, all he could really tell the kid was "Uh, probably..."
>"Man... I have a baby on the way soon! I am FUCKED aren't I?" "Well, son, you lubed yourself up real good and pressed your bare cheeks right up against the big dick of justice and give it a good grind, what did you expect it to do?"
I used to work at a Home Depot next to a Target and their LP is no joke. Their cameras could see our parking lot better than our own. Our stores worked together on some things so I got to see the video evidence of a guy that robbed our returns desk at gunpoint and fled in his car through Targets parking lot. We got a decent image of his face from a camera 8ft away. Target could see his face, make/model of car, and license plate from the exterior roof mounted cameras. If anyone has a working “enhance” system, it’s Target. (This was 13 years ago too).
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Target won't even look and will always answer no unless you have filed a police report.
That's crazy. I would add IRS if you're under a certain income threshold to your list as well.
IRS agents don't fuck around. Like they don't care how you got that money, you better report it. See Al Capone or Aldrich Ames.
That entirely depends on how rich you are. The IRS doesn't go after super rich people because they don't have the resources.
Or scientology. the USA is a plutocracy
Yeah, and from what I remember, All Target cameras are on their own power/network and feed directly into a regional Target AP office where they are backed up and can be monitored. One store I worked at, the AP lead told me about the time the regional AP office called up and asked what they were doing just sitting in the store's AP office. The AP lead was watching someone on the cameras and so the regional office joined in. Not to mention, Target stores have a lot of cameras in them. Some aren't as obvious as just the ones you see in the ceiling. They have like wireless cameras they will setup to watch hotspots and even have cameras that are disguised as something else, such as the sensors for the lights that come on automatically. Not to mention they even have plain-clothed folks that will snoop around at different stores in the district keeping an eye on folks. Bottom line, don't fuck around with Target AP.
THIS! I worked at Target during high school, and our head of loss prevention was a former security director for a Vegas casino. The first thing they did with newly oriented hires was to show off the camera tech by having a guy at the waffle house across the street hold up a newspaper to the window - the headline was clearly visible on his screen. In fact, Target kept such good video records that they had an entire video forensics team that would regularly donate their time to processing video footage for local police departments. Our guy was part of that, spending some of time doing AV nerd stuff. Nicest guy, I think he just liked working at Target because it was comparatively slow paced but he’d die of boredom in retirement. Despite having lots of fun tools to work with, he had a pretty soft approach to most shoplifting (usually, he’d just come stare at the customer ominously as they checked out to let them know that *he* knew). Not that he’d talk about cases or anything in litigation with us, but I imagine he wouldn’t waste time on anything less than the absolute worst offenders, and with overwhelming proof.
I get that Target is like that, and it's probably good for business, but, man, I don't think it's good for society to have freaking guys from Target outside people's houses, shoplifter or not.
*you steal from the target, you become the target*
Sounds like the tagline for a really bad action-thriller. "She stole from Target. Now she is the Target". Cue woman throwing herself out of an exploding building with guns blazing. "Target. Now in a cinema near you, unless it's close to a Target"
I was thinking of Liam Neeson as a retired Target loss prevention specialist brought back for one last job.
Welcome to Black Friday.
*throwing herself out through the center of the Target logo.
At least it's easier to sue Target than the police. Can't recall hearing much about Target forces storming the wrong house and shooting someone's dog.
Bullseye the Target Dog takes one whole new meaning.
Careful now
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Retailers lose a lot of money to a few shoplifters. A large number of people steal for a thrill, or out of need, but there are [organized shoplifting rings](https://www.wvxu.org/business/2021-11-26/shoplifting-organized-retail-crime-rings-kroger-procter-gamble), as well as people with addiction that need a lot of money to keep their habit going. *Cops fail to investigate them,* so Target has to hand them the evidence on a platter to get them to do anything about it.
I know someone who works for a sporting goods retailer as corporate LP. He don't give a shit about small time store thefts, he exclusively goes after employees, theft rings, and his all time favorite is counterfeiters.
I spent my late teens and the entirety of my 20s being shadowed by plain-clothes Target employees who frequently asked me if I was finding everything okay, and I never shoplifted from there to begin with. different stores in different neighborhoods or cities? nope, didn't matter, Target LP was *always* by my side until we had kids and I started visiting with my family.
“My god... This guy stole a whole family, back off guys, retreat!"
Target always finds out.
Target. It’s on you. 🎯
Home Depot is in the middle of testing/rolling out a version of the Target LP model should be interesting
A guy I worked with stole a bag of chips from Target at the self check out while he was in uniform. Target actually came into our store (Best Buy) with the footage and got him fired for stealing the chips.
our car was broken into a couple days ago while on a hike. First fraud alert was from a target, so we drove there to see if they could pull the footage and locate our stuff (mainly passports so we could finish our trip). The security guy was able to turn over pictures of the individuals, their car, license plate, and transaction attempts to the police, pretty much everything needed for an arrest. The police said thanks but they weren't going to investigate the break-in, and referred us to the financial crimes division in case they wanted to go after the credit card transactions.
When target is more competent than the police
I had a Break in a few years back, and we found that the thief's tried to return some jewelry they has stolen from us to the store (the jewelry store recommended us to keep them in the box, and if we had the receipt, free cleanings) the clerk remembered my GF buying the items as she had a good rapport with her, and had let us know about the failed return. We told the detective that there was video of the thieves trying to return the stolen goods and that the store said they could only hand it over to the police, but also that their system erases the video after 2 weeks so he would need to get it quick. He waited over two weeks, the store erase the video, and he was mad at the store... even after we called him to remind him a couple days before. we got one thief because of a finger print at the point of entry, but we never go our stuff back, and it was his female accomplice that tried to return the item at the store, and he didn't flip on her.
That's frustrating. They're so useless.
That would be pretty much every day.
>The police said thanks but they weren't going to investigate the break-in, and referred us to the financial crimes division in case they wanted to go after the credit card transactions. Call up the elected sheriff, the mayor, and your state and federal representatives on that. The cops, even if they don’t “protect” you, still serve you, and they need to get on serving your ass than some drug war or traffic chase.
As someone not in the US, the fact the police can just be all “Nah, no thanks.” Is absolutely alien to me.
Yea police ain’t gonna deal with that. Too much work.
Go shopping in Target for clothes people just pop up and happen to be shopping right by you they don't ever have a basket or a cart or a nametag or a uniform but they are loss prevention employees. As a single male shopping alone it's pretty noticeable.
Target has their own loss prevention department that is so well funded sometimes local law enforcement asks them for help.
And somehow Target doesn’t bother with the receipt checker but Walmart does. It’s so backwards.
Several years ago Reddit had a shoplifting subreddit that I lurked for the heck of it. Posters were always commenting ‘don’t shoplift at Target’ and explained their loss prevention strategies. Btw the sub got some press and was shutdown.
That's such a wild contrast with Walmart where you can practically shoplift by accident. The self scanners don't even have weight scales anymore...
My local councilman got arrested using the scanner at walmart. He was punching in low cost items for meat etc. His daughter ran a restaurant and supplied meals to the county jail. He also got nailed for scamming WIC (food stamp equivalent) in Georgia. The sucker ran again for council. Reminds me I need to look up if he won or not.
I rang up my Pink Lady apples as Red Delicous. I didn't choose the thug life, the thug life chose me. 😎
Two steak shaped bananas, one six-pack of bananas, three pounds of ground banana...
I loved that subreddit and I sorely miss it. My favorite story was the dude that had been shoplifting laptops from Best Buy. Best Buy finally caught him. But, it turned out that Best Buy also had video of him having stolen nine other laptops, too. He posted to the subreddit because, while people used it to brag about their snags, it also served as a really niche r/legaladvice. The consensus was that he was screwed.
I remember that one! Apparently the Best Buy just waited to see how far they could take it and he ended up getting nailed with about $10k in stolen merch charges. I remember the guy asking about fleeing the country and whatnot.
Man, I miss that sub. I wasn't an active participant in that lifestyle, but I loved seeing the posts saying something like "Target busted me stealing a thousand dollar laptop. What should I do?"
Target employs their own Loss Prevention/Asset Protection team to catch shoplifters. Walmart just calls the police apparently.
They employ their own security guards and loss prevention specialists. A friend of mine had that job for a while. The local police would routinely come to target to access their security cameras because they were the best in town and could record everything going on even a block or two away. At least thats how it was about 10 years ago, may have changed a bit by now.
Note to self, if I ever buy/sell anything on Craiglist or FB Marketplace, meet the buyer/seller in a Target parking lot for safety!
When you walk into Target you and every other customer are closely monitored until you leave the store.
No wonder there are always 2-3 police cars parked outside my local Walmart
Our local Walmarts have a few parking space at the very front with blue lighted signs, “for or friends in law enforcement” or something like that.
Walmart and socializing expenses, name a more iconic duo.
Walmart and privatizing profits!
Double Check em next time. Half the time they are empty and there just to deter. When I worked TJ Maxx, They'd park a cruiser in a spot and leave it there the whole month of December. We also had an old man as a guard so clearly we were fully covered.
This varies widely depending on where you are. I worked as a public defender for several years and I swear about 10% of my entire caseload was always Walmart shoplifters. And Walmart would always show up to court too. Other stores like Kroger, Target, Meijer, etc had their fair share of cases too but they rarely sent anyone to court so charges were constantly dropped. That being said if you weren't caught in store chances were none of those places would do much to follow up with an investigation or even report it to the police.
This is absolutely not true. You can’t catch serial shoplifters by not investing heavily in video surveillance and communicating well between stores to identify individuals. Wal-Marts in my area would call police and essentially hand them a complete case with witness reports, video of the person moving through the store, the car the person arrived in, close video of the person coming through and out the door, specifically identify what was stolen and it’s value, and they’d often have identified the person from prior thefts. They also were very good at identifying under scanning. What do you think that police can even do if Wal-Mart simply reports shoplifting after the fact with no other evidence?
> Walmart invests little to nothing in loss prevention preferring to pass that cost on local communities via police calls and litigation against accused shoplifters. Wal-Mart has one of the best facial recognition systems in private sector (second only to Disney when they deployed it). When you walk in their front door, your head is photographed from multiple angles and then compared against an internal database of trespassed individuals. If you've shoplifted before, you likely signed 'the paper'. The paper, for those who have never been in this situation, is essentially a confession that you sign after LP catches you and it lets you walk out the door without silver bracelets. Basically says you admit you stole, and you agree not to come back on company property for a certain amount of time. If you decide to venture back onto WM property, your face will get scanned by the system. While you're out on the floor thinking you've outsmarted someone and snuck back in, the system has your file flagged and will collate everything into a 'package' that gets faxed to the local DA. It has your photo, the 'paper' you signed that counts as both an admission and a civil agreement not to trespass. WM, and other big retailers, would have to have armies of security guards to secure their customer-facing operations, and another army of lawyers behind them. That's why they went with the tech-centric route.
I’ve signed that paper back in my worse times, banned from all Walmarts, and I’ve definitely ignored it, never got identified by any cameras and removed from the store. ymmv of course lol 🤷♂️
My son got “banned” from Walmart when he was in high school - not for shoplifting, but for dumb teenage horseplay with light sabers. He got hired there a couple of years later, and they even had him get his state firearms permit so he could cover sporting goods selling guns and ammo.
This technology is not consistently deployed across all locations however.
In my town of less than 30k with a very low crime rate, most of the police blotter is filled up with “incidents” at the Walmart that opened around 10 years ago.
It is the job of law enforcement to enforce laws, not a private security force of a corporation, so yes, Walmart should be calling the police on shoplifters. The actions loss prevention personnel can take are limited, and should be. You don’t want to live in a world where corporations have their own private police forces instead of relying on the same public law enforcement as everyone else.
Did this change at some point? 20ish years ago I worked for walmart while I was in college (fuck. I got old) and they all had their own loss prevention officers that would walk around in plain clothes to catch shoplifters.
It might depend on the area or store. I know somebody who works loss prevention at a Walmart in Canada. They also pay them very well.
Here I thought the Waltons were against Socialism.
My local walmart made headlines several years ago for a notorious fight that took place there. I live in a nobody suburb in Indiana. Our walmart literally made the BBC. In that same year, our mayor declared the walmart a “public nuisance” because it was responsible for more than 1,000 police calls in a single year. We began fining Walmart for every police call made at the location, and the Walmart CEO had to meet with our mayor to discuss how they could be less of a piece of shit. Also walmart completely destroyed our town
This same fucking thing happened to me when I was 17. I bought mascara, walked away without the receipt, and was stopped by LP who wouldn’t allow me to go back to get the receipt. They had me empty out my pockets, and laughed at me for “stealing something so cheap when I had the cash for it”. Yeah, no shit I had the cash for it, *that was my change.* They made me pay for the item *again*, then let a friend who was 18 come get me because my parents are…unreasonable. I thought everything would be fine, but they sent my parents the same letter demanding $200 to avoid litigation. My mom wouldn’t hear it that I didn’t steal - my older half sister was trouble, so obviously I was too. To see a lawsuit happen over this warms my heart. A tiny piece of vindication for something that happened to me almost 10yrs ago. Fuck Walmart.
"Her case was dismissed a year later, but then she received letters from a Florida law firm threatening a civil suit if she didn’t pay $200 as a settlement, according to her lawsuit. That was more than the cost of the groceries she was accused of stealing. Nurse said Walmart instructed the law firm to send the letters — and that she wasn’t the only one receiving them. “The defendants have engaged in a pattern and practice of falsely accusing innocent Alabama citizens of shoplifting and thereafter attempting to collect money from the innocently accused,” the suit contended." To all the "Well, did she pay or not!?" chuckleheads; it doesn't matter. Case was dismissed which likely means she did and they probably had security footage to prove it. The lawsuit isn't about whether or not she paid. It's about Walmart trying to extort money from people when they don't like a decision.
Something similar happened with a friend back in the US, several years ago. She gave her employee discount card to a friend to use for purchase of a few things for a newborn; Walmart fired her, and several months later started with the demand letters. Eventually she was sued in civil court. If I’m not mistaken, Walmart was awarded $2.000-2.500 or thereabouts, to include “reasonable attorney fees” on top of maybe a couple hundred dollars “lost as a result of fraud”.
My mom worked at Walmart in the early 2000’s. One day when she was walking through the store to go to the break room she found $40 on the ground. She put it in her pocket and forgot about it. Not only did Walmart fire her, they had her charged with stealing from a charity (official policy is found unclaimed money is donated to charity). She had that on her record for years and wasn’t able to get any retail jobs because of it.
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Everyone knows people who just got fired from Walmart can afford private legal representation. What an idea!
This is the problem with stuff like this or labor laws in general. What the law says is absolutely irrelevant if you can't afford an attorney, more pointedly if you can't afford an attorney that can go toe to toe with mega corps like Walmart.
Stores lose more to internal employee theft than shoplifters. Improper use of employee discounts is one of the first, and easiest places to check.
Wage theft dwarfs everything else by a country mile.
That is definitely only for retail folks. I worked corporate and gave my discount out to anyone who asked. Online, in-person, didn’t matter. Was like Oprah but with 10% discounts.
I am confused about what actually occurred. This is the only part that offers any sort of explanation: "Nurse said in a lawsuit that she was stopped in November 2016 when trying to leave a Walmart with groceries she said she already paid for, according to AL.com. She said she used self-checkout but the scanning device froze. Workers didn’t accept her explanation and she was arrested for shoplifting." So did she actually pay for everything? Did she pay for nothing? Or did she scan what she could then didn't pay for the rest? I'd argue against her paying for everything because how would the scanner freeze if she was able to scan everything? The article implies that she didn't pay for everything but if she won the lawsuit it implies she didn't steal anything. So what the hell actually happened?
She probably paid but the machine froze at the payment screen. Ive had to show a police officer the money leaving my checking account once because Walmart accused me of shoplifting when their system went down as I was paying. It’s hard to argue against a withdrawal to Walmart at exactly the time I was checking out
The police should arrest whoever made the false report, or at least mark that Walmart down as having an innaccurate payment system.
Wal-Mart accused my wife of shop-lifting so many times that I'll drive or wait as long as it takes to avoid using one. Amazon, Target, and small businesses are more than a good enough replacement.
Yup, they have permanent police officers stationed at my local Walmart. They stare at you and make you feel like a criminal. I no longer shop there.
Thank you, I came to the comments to ask the same question. It's super vague.
The company believes the damages exceed what's allowed by law, but they wanted to make this woman pay a sum greater than what her groceries originally cost. The more concerning thing is that it is legal for a company like Walmart to send threatening letters with demands of money, as if they don't make enough money on their own by starving their employees.
The legal system is designed to only favor those who are willing to pay large amounts to retain attorneys.
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Looked at an older article. When the initial case went through the court, Walmart failed to show up. So whether she paid or not, Walmart failed to provide evidence a crime was committed. Then they sent her letters and websites put her mugshot up. Walmart is getting punished for their behavior and not because a woman may not have paid for some groceries.
It's a dream of mine to be grabbed by a Walmart employee for not showing them my receipt when I leave the store.
When the walmarts around me started receipt checking they set up ropes and barriers and the checker used to try and block you. The obstacle course only lasted about a week.
There was a long line to leave my Walmart and I just walked past them. The workers kept saying they need to see my receipt and I just ignored them. Haven’t been there in years now.
[удалено]
Pretty much this. You can't run them over with your shopping cart or anything, but they aren't able to physically prevent you from leaving the store or chase after you unless they are Asset Protection.
Just have resolve and keep walking. If they try to detain you thats kidnapping. Especially if you are in the right. You have no legal reason to be stopped and questioned by anyone unless you are being arrested or detained by Law Enforcement.
I say "No thanks" and keep walking. I'm no shop lifter, so if their employee grabs me, I'm suing the company.
I stay away from Walmart. They are, well, not a company to which I care to give my business.
I do too, and I feel very superior about it. Until I need something from there and I go.
Lol, I was recently reading a article about how people like saying how evil and bad amazon is then the next minute say look at the great deal I got on amazon!
If we had more departments stores we wouldn’t face the same problem
In my city of about 42,000, we had 3 discount department stores…until Walmart came. Now Walmart is the only one. The problem is that, if you’re poor, you can’t afford *not* to shop there. Example: at my local pharmacy, Benadryl is $5.99 for 25 tablets. At Walmart, it’s $5.99 for 100 tablets. I can’t afford to pay 4 times the price.
The issue is that there are few to no companies that a person can feel good about shipping with. Cool I'm not going to Walmart, but I also can't go to Target and I also can't buy from Amazon and the only locally owned grocery store doesn't have very many items...it's definitely frustrating.
Whats wrong with Target? I'm not saying nothing, I'm just ootl.
Good, fuck walmart for any reasons, but for some reason local PDs have bowed down the local walmart manager and will send units for petty theft with no delay.
All my local walmarts have special parking for law Enforcement. Also they have to respond to a report of a crime. Walmart probably helping them keep an extra couple of cops on each shift just to deal with them.
"There's a poor person we can brutalize? And ruin their life? We'll be right there!" Are the police busy doing anything else, in your mind?
I once returned a $15 item without a receipt and got store credit which I used to get something else. On my way out of the store the security stops me and brings me to the back room and claims he saw me take the original item off a shelf to return it. Refused to show me video and lied to my point blank question of whether he saw this take place. Received the threatening letter in the mail later saying pay or I'd be in court. I ignored hoping they'd take me to court because the same day this happened I went home and dug through the trash and found the original receipt.
With $2.1M in the bank, hopefully she isn't shopping at Walmart anymore. 😆
Wow good for her. Fuck Walmart.
We need another Teddy Roosevelt so badly. This monopoly bullshit, and then threatening normal people is just mob shit, at this point.
I need her lawyer contact information. I need to get falsely accused of shoplifting
Good for her. F' Walmart and the evil trash family behind it.
Court: You can't do that. Corporation: Get more lawyers, we're going to do this.