With most big supermarkets using anti-theft alarms and guards at store exists and barcodes to prevent price tags from being transferred from one product to another, two suspects in Larceny used a quite clever tactic to beat these measures when they stole a Blu-ray DVD player at a Wal-Mart store.
Wal-Mart staff first became suspicious when they spotted an empty Blu-ray player box and a DVD/VCR unit in the store's pet supply section. They checked the inventory of the DVD player, which showed up as sold. To try find out what happened to the DVD/VCR's packing, they checked over CCTV footage around the time the unit was flagged as sold and saw footage of a lady with the Blu-ray player in her shopping cart. At the time, a male suspect put the DVD/VCR unit in his shopping cart and both headed to the pet supply section.
Once in the pet section, they took both products out of their packaging, then put the Blu-ray player in the DVD/VCR's packaging and sealed it back up. Finally, they put a can of dog food into the cart and headed for the check-out, leaving the DVD/VCR unit and the Blu-ray packaging behind. With the Blu-ray player hidden inside the DVD/VCR packaging, they paid the $60 price of the DVD/VCR, in-turn cheating the Wal-Mart out of a $300 Blu-ray player as they left the store without anyone noticing anything suspicious until it was too late.
The police have been notified and the Virginia Beach Police are on the lookout for the two suspects. The female suspect is estimated to be 30 to 35 years old, around 5'7" and 170lbs and the male suspect is estimated to be 35 to 45 years old, around 5'9# and 200lbs. The male has a pot belly, visible thinning of the hair with a bald spot on top and a moustache.
As the suspects would need a HDTV set to make full use of their stolen player, it would be interesting to see how they managed to get that. Surely if they bought their HDTV, they should have been able to afford the Blu-ray player. Even if they are stealing the players to sell off again, they are unlikely going to get away with this method of scam once other stores find out what’s been happening.
