Grocery Employees Charged In $12,000 Yogurt Discount Scheme

You know the type of grocery promotions where you buy, say, ten yogurts and get $5 off your order? Ever wonder what would happen if you bought one yogurt, tricked the register into thinking you bought ten – and then did this thousands of times?

You’d end up getting a whole lot of money off your grocery order. And then you’d end up facing three to ten years in prison.

That’s what seven employees of an Arkansas grocery store have discovered, after they were arrested and charged in a scheme to defraud their employer out of more than $12,000, by pretending to buy tens of thousands more yogurts than the store even had in stock.

The manager of Mac’s Cash Saver in Camden, Arkansas caught onto the scheme after police said he “noticed an exuberant amount of yogurt sales.” The store carries anywhere from 100 to 150 individual yogurt containers at a time. But over a three-day period last week, store records showed that somehow 22,170 yogurts were sold – more than the store typically sells in many months, or even years.

That “buy ten, save $5” must have been one popular promotion. It sure was, among a group of store employees.

Police and the store’s manager checked out surveillance footage, and saw several instances where an employee would go through checkout with a cartload of groceries – and one yogurt. According to the police incident report, another employee behind the register would ring up the single yogurt, “and put it in the register that hundreds of yogurts were being purchased.” For every ten yogurts entered into the system, the overall total would be reduced by $5, to the point that many transactions ended with the employee-customer owing a few dollars for hundreds of dollars worth of groceries. At times, the store ended up owing money to the customer.

This occurred over and over again, for several days, costing the store a total of $12,650.18.

Using the surveillance footage, police identified and arrested seven suspects, all store employees – 39-year-old Chynethia King, 39-year-old Brandon Garcia, 27-year-old Emmarie Owens, 25-year-old Roxie Laster, 21-year-old Lakiyah Hopson, 18-year-old Kaliyah Burton and one juvenile who was not named.

They were all taken into custody and made an initial court appearance last week. If convicted on charges of felony theft, each faces a potential prison sentence of three to ten years and a fine of up to $10,000. They also could be ordered to reimburse the store for its losses.

Getting $5 off for buying ten yogurts is a pretty good deal. Getting $12,650.18 off for pretending to buy 22,170 yogurts is even better – at least, until you get caught. Now, seven former Mac’s Cash Saver employees will be waiting to find out whether the next yogurts they have, will be in the prison cafeteria.

Image source: krossbow