You may remember how Best Buy recently went to great lengths to explain its new policy of requiring a photo ID for all in-store returns, claiming it helped to prevent fraudulent returns. Except it didn’t do a thing to stop a Best Buy staffer in New Jersey from making thousands of dollars off bogus returns.

According to local news reports, the employee would create duplicate receipts of mobile phone purchases and then “return” them and pocket the cash for herself. Police say she made at least $3,500 off the scam.

But she wasn’t caught by some ingenious ID-scanner. Rather, it was her boss who noticed that these returned phones were not showing up in inventory. And to avoid having her name show up on all the returns, the employee convinced two other staffers to help her out.

“I only went to them when I couldn’t make the returns in my department and asked them to do it because I knew they wouldn’t question me if I told them it was for a customer,” she told police.

So congrats to Best Buy for instituting a system that forbids a customer from returning a factory-sealed, $10 DVD with a receipt because he doesn’t want to show his ID, but will permit an employee to steal thousands in cash.

Best Buy employee charged with theft [TheDailyJournal.com]

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