A Missouri man described by federal prosecutors as “a longtime fraudster who has no respect for the law” has been sentenced to seven years and three months behind bars and ordered to shell out more than $300,000, six months after he was convicted in connection with a long-running and lucrative scam involving Kohl’s Cash.
36-year-old Marshall Lampkin of St. Louis was convicted of mail fraud back in August, for ordering hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise online and scamming Kohl’s rewards program to get it all for free.
Kohl’s gives out Kohl’s Cash coupons for certain purchases, which you can combine to apply toward a future purchase. And if you return an item purchased with Kohl’s Cash, you’ll get a refund in the form of new Kohl’s Cash.
Authorities said Lampkin figured out how to exploit that system to his felonious advantage, if he acted quickly.
“Lampkin used Kohl’s Cash to purchase merchandise in a Kohl’s store,” prosecutors explained. “He would then immediately use the same Kohl’s Cash to order merchandise online, knowing that the in-person transaction had not yet registered.” After tricking the system by using the Kohl’s Cash twice and getting both his in-store and online purchases for free, he would then return the items he bought in the store, get his Kohl’s Cash back, and do it all over again.
Doing so required some quick fingers and a lot of planning. “Each time that Lampkin pulled off his scheme,” prosecutors continued, “he had to predetermine how much Kohl’s Cash he was going to spend on the in-store purchase so that he could have an online purchase for approximately the same amount ready to go on his cellphone as soon as he approached the checkout counter in the store.”
Kohl’s eventually caught onto his scam, deactivated his online account and warned stores to look out for him. But instead of stopping, prosecutors said Lampkin adapted. “Once he knew that Kohl’s was on to him, he began traveling around the country to different stores where he was less likely to be recognized,” they said. He recruited accomplices to make in-store purchases on his behalf, and placed online orders using different accounts. “Lampkin devoted nearly all his time to his scheme,” prosecutors pointed out. “In a matter of months, he carried it out more than 100 times at Kohl’s stores in over a dozen states from coast to coast to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of online merchandise.”
His $293,000 worth of online purchases included flooring, furniture, small appliances and other items, which were shipped to storage units in St. Louis and a relative’s house in Illinois (one of them pictured above). An informant told investigators that Lampkin referred to his hauls as his “retirement fund,” as he “planned to accumulate $1,000,000 of merchandise and sell the entirety to an ‘end-buyer’ in New York.”
Instead, he was arrested and put on trial. Prosecutors noted pointedly that it took a jury all of seven minutes to convict him on five counts of mail fraud.
Authorities hope Lampkin’s prison sentence puts an end to a nearly twenty-year crime spree. “Since 2007, Lampkin has been repeatedly arrested, charged, and convicted in state court for various scams,” prosecutors said. First came multiple convictions for illegally selling public transit tickets. Then he moved on to retail theft, where he allegedly “exploited Walgreens’ rewards program to obtain merchandise for free that he later returned for a cash refund,” in a scheme similar to the one he carried out at Kohl’s.
Modest punishments “did nothing to deter him,” prosecutors said in arguing for a lengthy prison term. “He has not faced any serious consequences for his actions — a fine here, a month or two in jail there, and then he picks back up where he left off. Enough is enough.”
In addition to serving his prison sentence, Lampkin must give up all of the stolen items that were seized, and pay Kohl’s $301,713 in restitution.
“Earn it on what you need. Spend it on what you want,” Kohl’s says in advertising its Kohl’s Cash program. “The more you spend, the more you earn!”
Just don’t try to spend it twice. There are consequences for doing so – as one man has just learned the hard way.
Image source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Missouri
