Impersonating Walmart employees is now a shoplifting fad, including stores hit in NC
Shoppers in Gastonia, North Carolina, have become the latest prey for bold criminals impersonating Walmart clerks, a ruse that is being reported in states across the nation.
The Gastonia incident involved a fake Walmart employee who approached a couple in a Walmart parking lot on East Franklin Boulevard Monday and asked for their receipt, reports TV station WCNC.
“He told my wife: ‘I need to see that receipt again. The lady that checked it, she thinks she might have read it wrong’,” shopper Jerry Butler told WSOC.
The couple surrendered their receipt and WCNC reports the guy tried -- and failed -- minutes later to use it to steal items from the store.
Butler told WSOC he walked back into the store to complain about the encounter, just as the would-be thief was being chased out by real Walmart employees. The suspect remains at large, the station reported.
Instances of thieves impersonating Walmart staffers have been reported nationwide, including multiple cases in North Carolina.
TV station WITN reported in August that police in eastern N.C. were looking for a man who stole televisions while dressed as a Walmart employee at eight different stores.
Similar cases have been reported in every region of the country, including Georgia, Missouri, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Florida, according to media outlets.
Among the strangest of the cases: In Virginia, a man posing as a Walmart employee in 2016 took over a cash register to ring up a customer, according to NBC Washington.
He then grabbed some money and walked out of the store, the station reported.
On Nov. 24, a fake Walmart employee was caught on video in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wheeling a large cart out of a store loaded with large-screen televisions and pinatas, reported KRQE.
Shoplifters have also been caught in the past two weeks posing as fake Salvation Army bell ringers outside a Walmart in Wyoming, reported K2Radio.com.
In that case, two men tried to scam Walmart shoppers out of donations, but were caught when real Walmart staffers realized they were fakes, the station reported.
This story was originally published December 13, 2018 at 1:44 PM with the headline "Impersonating Walmart employees is now a shoplifting fad, including stores hit in NC."