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    Twins Use Fake Barcodes To Steal $14,500
    2006-06-29 22:07:01 GMT

    Matthew Borghese - All Headline News Staff Writer

    Milwaukee, WI (AHN) - Twin brothers have been arrested after using fake barcodes to buy items at “deep discount.”

    Police in Green Bay say Justin Chitwood, 23, of Milwaukee and Nicholas Chitwood, 23, of Oak Creek used the barcodes to purchase more than 100 graphing calculators, which typically cost $150 each, for less than $10 apiece; only to sell them on eBay for huge profits.

    However, police say the twins, along with their girlfriends, Brittani Hanson, 20, who lives with Justin Chitwood, and Brittany Adams, 20, who lives with Nicholas Chitwood, will have to go before a judge on charges of conspiring to commit theft, computer crime and entity ID theft.

    Detective Barry Waddell, an 18-year veteran of the West Allis Police Department, who led the investigation, tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “The photocopying and sticking the new UPC sticker over the old ones is unique. I’ve never seen this before.”

    According to the paper, a criminal complaint accuses the two women of helping the brothers sell about $14,500 worth of Texas Instruments calculators on the Internet.

    Article © All Headline News - All Rights Reserved

    Just goes to show you, the more you make a system idiot proof, the better the idiot the universe makes!  (BTW, my old job used to be to install these security systems, but they don’t work if the employees are this stupid…common, you should know if a high end calculator is selling for 10% of usual costs!)


  • @Jennifer:

    Twins Use Fake Barcodes To Steal $14,500
    2006-06-29 22:07:01 GMT

    Matthew Borghese - All Headline News Staff Writer

    Milwaukee, WI (AHN) - Twin brothers have been arrested after using fake barcodes to buy items at “deep discount.”

    Police in Green Bay say Justin Chitwood, 23, of Milwaukee and Nicholas Chitwood, 23, of Oak Creek used the barcodes to purchase more than 100 graphing calculators, which typically cost $150 each, for less than $10 apiece; only to sell them on eBay for huge profits.

    However, police say the twins, along with their girlfriends, Brittani Hanson, 20, who lives with Justin Chitwood, and Brittany Adams, 20, who lives with Nicholas Chitwood, will have to go before a judge on charges of conspiring to commit theft, computer crime and entity ID theft.

    Detective Barry Waddell, an 18-year veteran of the West Allis Police Department, who led the investigation, tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “The photocopying and sticking the new UPC sticker over the old ones is unique. I’ve never seen this before.”

    According to the paper, a criminal complaint accuses the two women of helping the brothers sell about $14,500 worth of Texas Instruments calculators on the Internet.

    Article © All Headline News - All Rights Reserved

    Just goes to show you, the more you make a system idiot proof, the better the idiot the universe makes!  (BTW, my old job used to be to install these security systems, but they don’t work if the employees are this stupid…common, you should know if a high end calculator is selling for 10% of usual costs!)

    But they are calculators……no one cares about calculators.  :|  Now if it was like an Xbox 360, everyone knows that thing aint cheap.


  • MW is probably right there. I know that most of the people at the places I shop at couldn’t care less what the thing you’re buying costs :P.

    To admit my ignorance, though, I still don’t quite understand how the guys got away with paying so little… could someone who does explain that to me? :P


  • When your younger, you see adults as smart, and think that kids grow out of stupidity.  Then, comes adolescence, and the scariest thing happens, you realize that the idiot sitting next to you is getting more responsibilities by the day.  My dad and I both agree that idiots shouldn’t be allowed to vote.  Darn universal suffrage, it just causes the suffering of others. :-(


  • Ah…part of one of my jobs is to deal with barcodes and get them “in the system.”  Actually, this is not surprising that it works, and is probably used regularly around the world.  I’ve done cashiering, years ago, and it’s a pretty mindless, mind-numbing job.  You end up going on autopilot until something interrupts your momentum: a question, something isn’t in the system (barcode doesn’t ring up), a spill, etc.  This is a little more reasonable to me than the cashiers whom accept photocopied traveler’s checks and $3 bills.

    Nut -  Each item with a barcode has a unique number to it, so that it is identified correctly and the proper amount is charged.  There is a server somewhere that has a database of the barcodes, so when read, it reports back to the cashier station the amount.  These guys photocopied another item’s (legitimate) barcode, and pasted over the calculator barcode, so that when it was scanned, it came up as another item entered as $10.  If they were smart, it was another calculator, but could have been anything.

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