Woman Figures Any Price Tag Will Do, Switches Store Labels Around To Score Cheap Toys

We’d like to say we’re shocked, simply shocked that a woman is accused of switching out price tags on pricy toys like Lego sets in exchange for cheaper ones in order to buy the items and resell them for a profit. But we’re not that surprised, because we’ve seen this sort of very bad no good behavior before.

The Florida mom is accused of changing price tags on toys at Target and Walmart to buy them at a lower price, and then selling them online. She’s reportedly generated a nice little profit for herself, ranging in the tens of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately for her, her switcheroo scam was apparently caught on tape, says CBS Miami.

The detective on her case worked on her trail for months, even sifting through her trash and following her while keeping an eye on her bank records. He was notified by Target security at first, and was amazed at how much she’d managed to pilfer with the switcheroo scheme.

“At first I thought, ‘This is crazy,’” the detective said. “How can it be this easy to steal this much?”

One video clip shows exactly how she did it — she picks up a Lego box, puts a sticker on it and walks off to the cashier. The cashier rings up the item and boom, bang, that’s all she wrote.

Legos were a popular target for her, say cops, as she’d usually pay less than $7 for toys that usually sell for more than $100. She used labels for inexpensive items like baking pans or cutting boards and simply slapped them wherever she wanted to, said the detective. He claims she often made over $30,000 in a month.

Officials say she would take orders on her eBay store then head to the store to change labels and buy the items, then go directly to the post office to ship them out.

A Target spokesperson said in a statement:

“Target takes incidents of this nature very seriously and we partner closely with local law enforcement to help aid in these investigations.”

Using the store’s labels is somewhat different than the case of the tech exec who allegedly printed out his own labels at home, but yeah, still highly illegal.

Police: Lauderhill Mother Stole Thousands In Label Switching Scheme [CBS Miami]

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