A Michigan man has been sentenced to serve three to 20 years in prison for his role in a counterfeit coupon scam that defrauded Meijer out of more than $800,000.
31-year-old Travis Gale is one of the last in a group of eight individuals to be convicted in Kent County and sentenced in connection with the scheme. It was back in 2022 when Meijer first discovered that shoppers had been using fraudulent coupon bar codes at several of its stores. An investigation found the fraud had been going on since at least 2018, and cost the retailer $805,000 in losses.
Gale and seven others were arrested in January of last year. But, perhaps not wanting to call attention to the fact that it had been so easily scammed for so long, Meijer managed to keep it all hush-hush until just last month, when Grand Rapids’ WOOD-TV happened upon some court documents in Gale’s case.
Over a period of just two months in early 2022, “Travis Gale was observed via CCTV or transaction data participating in 90 transactions of roughly $9,000 in value during that span of time alone,” the station quoted a probable cause affidavit as reading. The document went on to say that detectives who searched Gale’s home found numerous Visa and MasterCard gift cards that he had obtained using fraudulent coupons.
Gale pleaded guilty in May to a felony count of conducting a criminal enterprise. Six of his co-defendants are already serving sentences of their own, all of them after also pleading guilty to conducting a criminal enterprise. 41-year-old Thomas Ragen was sentenced last July to serve 40 months to 20 years in prison. He’s the only defendant so far whom court records show has been ordered to pay restitution to Meijer, in the amount of $24,955.39. 31-year-old Travis Plotts was sentenced last month to 4 to 20 years in prison, while 40-year-old Efrain Tejada and 30-year-old Sara Tejada were each sentenced in June to 3 to 20 years in prison.
Two other co-defendants, 35-year-old Kristin Ragen and 36-year-old Elizabeth Tejada, are each serving three years of probation. 32-year-old Christine Day is the last of the group to have been arrested last year. She’s currently being held on $200,000 bond pending the outcome of her case.
No further details about the fraud scheme have been released. But there were several other cases at the time, similar to these individuals’ crimes, in which the perpetrators scanned fake bar codes – often from their phones – over and over again in order to get huge discounts on whatever they chose to purchase. And many times, they’d choose to purchase gift cards, scanning their bar codes enough times to get the gift cards for free. Then they’d either turn around and sell the cards, or use them in stores to get even more things for free.
Many times, defendants in such cases have been charged with retail theft and slapped on the wrist, ordered to pay back what they stole and issued a stern warning not to do it again. Not in Kent County, Michigan, though, where this group of convicted coupon fraudsters is doing serious time for a far more serious crime. And Gale, along with his former co-conspirators, now has plenty of time to ponder whether it was all worth it.
Image source: Meijer/Kent County Sheriff’s Office
When will these idiots ever learn? There are lots of point-of-sale controls in place these days that you just can’t get away with coupon fraud like you could 5-10 years ago.