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I've never stolen in my life and don't intend to.
But I'm interested in petty theft and deception, what works and what doesn't. I know a lot of people on TL have stolen shit so why don't you share your tales?.
My latest 2 ideas:
1. A lot of hotels have staff-change around 9pm and the night staff won't recognise you. You can go into the hotel bar, order a few beers and put the bill on a room number. In the last hotel I worked at, this would work. Would it work in other hotels?
2. This is for when there are two of you, and one has a daily bus ticket, and the line to the bus is long, and the bus is a double-decker/or has windows that open. First person gets on the bus using the ticket, then walks down the aisle and passes the ticket through an open window to the other guy whos waiting outside at the end of the queue to get on.
I'm really interested in shoplifting. Is it true that most stores have someone watching the floor through all the cameras all the time?
Sooo many times I'm walking round a shop (large or tiny) and no one can see me and I think "hey, I could just snatch some item right into my pocket then leave, or even just continue shopping". Does this actually work? When doesn't it work?
In some stores (supermarkets for example), is there some secret tagging device? Like, will alarms go off if you try to walk out with some biscuits that haven't been scanned by the machine/cashier?
So ya...obviously I have no idea about this shit and I really want to find out about it. Its just one of those interesting things I know nothing about but would like to.
 
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Read Kevin Mitnick's biography and books.
His "Art of Deception" and "Art of Intrustion", although somewhat unpleasant to read, open your mind when it comes to how criminals think when it comes to these kind of things. etc etc just read them if you're interested in this stuff.
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Art of Deception does not really cover the topics he speaks of, and mostly deals with corporate espionage. Can't say anything about Art of Intrusion as I haven't read that.
Even so I agree with Faust, even though these books may not cover the specific topics you are asking about, they are a good read as they give you quite an insight on the psychological and social side of things.
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Actually that's just as interesting as the "practical" side to this stuff. I never really thought about how (as i wrote in other guys blog just a minute ago) some people can be all morally up themselves but at the same time be thieving and evil bastards. Its easy to say people are just desperate, or messed up, or its culture or nuture or nature, but that doesnt give me any details that im sure there are
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this one time i walked in a gas station grabbed a skittles, prepaid the gas and walked out only halfway from my car did i realize i didnt pay for the candy.  but i kept walking  i actually dont know exactly how the scanner detects things etc etc. but i knew a couple kids from my highschool that would grab cds/dvds at meijer and then go into the bathroom and take the cds/dvds out of their cases. seems pretty smart. i also got to thinkin if you had a friend working there for the trash end of meijer you could throw expensive shit into the trash bins and collect the stuff afterwords.
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I once accidentally walked out of a CompUSA with a video game or PC peripheral as a kid, 'cuz my older brother told me "hold this". Then I just followed him around while we looked at a whole bunch of stuff, and even went straight out the door while he completely forgot that I was holding on to it the whole time. Only until we walked out of the store that I asked him, "Shouldn't we pay for this?"
+ Show Spoiler +We immediately walked right back in and returned it
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At my high school people stole from the gas station store everyday. Some people would work in pairs, when one person with a backpack would bend over to tie their shoe, and their accomplice would slip in what they wanted (usually drinks or larger items for this riskier method). I personally used to just slide things up my sleeves as I passed a corner of an isle. Other more confident people would simply hold what they wanted in their hands as if they were a customer, and then simply leave with a group of paying customers.
It was a pretty common thing, and the store employees definitely acknowledged it, seeing as how they literally had 3 guards on duty during lunch break. Stealing from a convenience store is just as easy as you think. Also, if I recall correctly, there is a general rule for stealing in America that if you make it past the parking lot there is literally nothing they can do.
I don't encourage theft, but if you come from a poor family and need food, do what you gotta do.
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OneFierceZealot : Ah yes thats a good one. I was trying on clothes in stores the other day and was trying to think of a way itd be possible to sneak some out. I acutally took in 6 belts to try on and then could only find 5 whilst there was packaging for 6 (must have put one back without realising at some point). I was so like "omgomg shes actually gonna think i stole one" haha
Then later I was in another store, tried on 3 more belts after taking all the packaging off. No good so i came out and the girl was like "errrr....u took the packaging off, we cant sell them now". I was like "wtf srsly? i better go then" and got out of there :x fuck packaging. how am i suppose to pose in the mirror with all that crap down there.
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I used to work at Best Buy and ppl would steal shit all the time.
these are just a couple of the many stories,
We had these huge karaoke sets that came in big boxes. They'd take the box and open it and take the karaoke stuff out and shove it behind something on some back aisle somewhere. Then they'd put like 10 expensive TV remotes or some other smaller expensive electronics to make it weigh about the same as it does with the karaoke gear in there then package the box back up and walk out the front door with it after paying $50 at the cash register when there's really like $2000 worth of stuff. The front alarm could go off but the front dude just checks the receipt and after seeing he paid for it he lets him go.
More intense situations happen when dudes come into the store in teams of 3 or 4 (all with headsets disguised as cell phones, or cell phones, so they can communicate with each other) and 2 of them distract employees (happened to me while I was working one day) while another one makes off with 8k worth of PC gear. Literally all it takes is for you to turn for 3 seconds and its gg.
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I remember once incident where I thieved as a young teenager. I was probably about fourteen and I used to shoplift candybars (snickers, mars, twix etc) at the store directly below the apartment we lived in a lot. One day I noticed the cashier girl eyeing me and "following me" as I walked through the isles. I did a double-turn and snuck away and ditched the candy bar. When I went to pay she said "And then there was the other piece of candy," thinking she had me. I offered her to search me if she wanted and I even emptied out my pockets. Score 1-0 SolHeiM!
And another time I was quite drunk and we went inside a 7-11. I was eyeing a Daim Ice Cream and I said to my friends how much I really wanted one, and when we left I proceeded to just pick one up and walked out the door. No one noticed.
Petty theft from major chains I don't really give a crap about since no one really gets hurt. But I would never steal from another person.
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These are from when I was a kid, I shamelessly shoplifted candy and stuff, I didn't really know any better :/
I don't know where you live, but in Sweden grocery stores usually does not have those alarm thingies. I'm talking about the type where they have put up two poles which you have to go through to get out. They will start beeping if you have an item that the cashier hasn't registered as far as I know, only seen it happen when the cashier made a mistake. Almost all stores in bigger cities have these, but almost none in the small and mid sized towns.
I've never shoplifted in a store which had those, but I've seen a friend of mine get past them with stuff and they didn't beep. I assume he had the stuff in his shoes or somehow got it through there without passing the item between the detectors, I imagine with some sleight of hand it can be done fairly easily.
As for stores without those, it used to be super easy, perhaps still is. When people aren't watching you can put whatever pretty much anywhere and still get out, unless you're trying to hide five watermelons in your spring jacket or something. I only shoplifted chocolate bars and stuff like that, usually went into either my sleeve if I had a longsleeved shirt and/or jacket. Good old grab two bars and tie your shoe to put the bars inside your pants inside your socks worked well too. If I didn't have either of those, just putting them at the pant/shorts waistline worked well too. I have managed to steal gum right next to the cashier a couple of times by reaching for a pack to buy and getting a pack or two into my sleeve.
Every time I took something I bought something aswell. Like buy one chocolate bar steal five. I don't know if it made any difference, but I always ended up doing it.
I did it until one day I was doing the usual routine, and a guy came up to me and said "What you got in your pocket?". I had a chocolate bar in my sleeve, I got it out and just threw it in his face and ran like the motherfucking wind. My friend was there with me but he didn't get away. Later my friend came to me and said if I went back and talked to them they wouldn't call the cops, so I went and cried and all that, and they just gave me a good yelling. Didn't steal ever again after that.
TL;DR: I was stupid as a kid.
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Here's a short and succinct article about how retail sensors work:
http://www.soyouwanna.com/retail-security-systems-work-9312.html
I had some friends in high school that had worked out a clever system of stealing CDs from stores like wal-mart/best buy that made it extremely hard to catch them, even if you saw them opening the box on the security cameras. But that's just petty theft and not very interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_Me_if_You_Can_(book)
is a pretty amazing story. The stuff he does in the movie doesn't quite show you how smart this guy was. A few times he rented a security guard uniform and stood outside a bank all night with an out of order sign over the drop box. People just came by and gave him their deposits.
He'd open new accounts under fake names and then steal a stack of deposit slips, writing his account name very carefully on several of them. Then he'd return them to the bank, and every now and then someone would fill it out not realizing they were depositing their money into HIS account. He'd come by a day or two later and clean the account out, never to be heard from again.
During his pilot days he realized that any airline service desk would cash a third party check for a pilot up to $100. So he would fill out a whole stack of fake checks to $100, then cash one at every single service desk at major airports. As soon as the shift changed, he'd start over and do it again.
His book is just filled with stuff like that. Most of them wouldn't work anymore due to all of our improvements in technology (now-days someone doing that last trick would have their picture e-mailed to everyone that works at the service desks for those airlines and his "career" would be over just like that), but so many of them were not only ingenious but took a lot of courage to actually do.
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hahaha i just read this on yahoo answers:
Q: i just got caught shoplifting in boots whats going to happen?
A: Scotland Yard has your information, it will be passed on to the military then the Queen!!!
Biochemist: ya i love that movie!!
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I work in retail at a rather large store (about 18-30 employees working at a time) at we have a few cameras that record things near the front of the store but are not watched ever. The only time we go back and watch them is if we suspect an employee of stealing from a register.
As for tags that set off the door alarm, we only place them on high price items (usually above 150 dollars). We also place them on some clothing, but they are really easy to detect (usually a big hunk of plastic). On video games/ high priced items we put a sticker tag that activates the alarm unless it is turned off by a magnet at the check out. These can usually just be ripped off the packaging or cut off if you carry a pocket knife. Often times we find 5-10 of them stuck to a toilet in the bathroom at the end of the night.
Another flaw is that if the door alarm goes off our store policy is to ask them if we can see in the bag (shopping bag only) and if they say no or keep walking we dont do anything. We also aren't allowed to stop people if they set off the alarm if they havent bought anything (we are to assume that they have some sort of phone/other item that sets off alarms by accident)
Basically people steal from our store everyday and we do nothing to try and stop them for the sake of not embarassing an innocent shopper.
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i stole some kid's pokemon cards when i was 9. his cards weren't even that good, iirc, he had a dugtrio and like 10 nidorans
edit: my mistake, thought this was about stealing, no i never shoplifted
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There's a scanner at the door that beeps if you take something. You hear it go haywire all the time at the mall.
Pros take off that stupid black bar that they scan, or just scratch it off, and then walk off with the item. My friends used to do this all the time at Best Buy, until they got security cameras installed one day after so many of their inventory ipods went missing.
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Almost the same as Eben here, we had however the alarms at the entrance to the bathrooms so people got clever and started doing it (cutting open boxes and such) in less patrolled parts of the stores...
Probably best story of me working and a guy getting caught was this guy decided he really wanted a 6 dollar dvd and put it down his pants as one of the cashiers saw... told the manager who is a 6'4 guy and huge.... also english, and the manager goes right up to the guys and says "can i see in your trousers sir?".... needless to say i almost died laughing watching this but the guy gave it up and left the store without incident.
great days... but no if the alarms go off i canada at least i know we are not allowed to follow them or attack them or something stupid. Dont be the hero is what they tell you
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Canada7170 Posts
I went shopping right after Christmas once and the alarms were going off at every store and nobody seemed to care.
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Katowice25012 Posts
On October 19 2010 08:49 Biochemist wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_Me_if_You_Can_(book)is a pretty amazing story. The stuff he does in the movie doesn't quite show you how smart this guy was. A few times he rented a security guard uniform and stood outside a bank all night with an out of order sign over the drop box. People just came by and gave him their deposits. He'd open new accounts under fake names and then steal a stack of deposit slips, writing his account name very carefully on several of them. Then he'd return them to the bank, and every now and then someone would fill it out not realizing they were depositing their money into HIS account. He'd come by a day or two later and clean the account out, never to be heard from again. During his pilot days he realized that any airline service desk would cash a third party check for a pilot up to $100. So he would fill out a whole stack of fake checks to $100, then cash one at every single service desk at major airports. As soon as the shift changed, he'd start over and do it again. His book is just filled with stuff like that. Most of them wouldn't work anymore due to all of our improvements in technology (now-days someone doing that last trick would have their picture e-mailed to everyone that works at the service desks for those airlines and his "career" would be over just like that), but so many of them were not only ingenious but took a lot of courage to actually do.
This is a really great book, the movie is awesome too but the book explains in a lot more detail.
John Dillinger apparently used to dress up as guy who sold bank alarms, then go into banks pretending to sell them better equipment as a way to check out exactly what their security was in close detail. Hilariously genius.
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i download various forms of media on the internet via torrent downloading. now i wouldnt steal a car, but i am a pirate. does this count as shoplifting?
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EPT
