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Fraud being perpetuated on Retail Merchants Fraud Description: Elderly white male approx. 5’8” and 200 pounds sometimes with glasses approaches young female cashier in retail stores of all types to include food stores (thus far always young female cashiers). It is possible he is traveling with a younger female perhaps 20 years his junior who provides a distraction for the fraud. His story to the cashier is that he wants to send a card which he displays with its envelope and that he wants to include $400 in it for his daughter in Hawaii who recently got married. He explains that he has only small bills and wants to exchange them for large bills to put in the card. The cashier gives him $400 in large bills which he puts inside the car and SEALS the envelope. Then he counts out his small bills but they add up to only $398. He then tells the cashier he needs to run out to the car to get the rest of the money, ie, $2. Through deception or slight of hand, and possibly aided by a female accomplice following him in the line who provides a distraction by asking cashier for change for a $100 bill, he switches the card and envelope containing the store’s $400 with a duplicate card in a SEALED duplicate envelope with some newspaper in which feels like the card with the money and passes it back to the cashier who thinks she has the $400 back. The man exits the store with his small bills PLUS the envelope with the $400 in it never to return. Because the cashier thinks the man is coming back, no one goes after him so no description of a car is currently available. According to the police the fraud is working consistently and he is possibly hitting up to six stores a day. Police feel the man is moving westward but certainly other directions are possible. Police asking for BBB assistance to alert their constituents. Anyone experiencing this fraud or having knowledge about it should contact their local police. |
