Frank Buchanan, 30, and his mother Dorothy Mae Buchanan, 68, were recently arrested in Minnesota for engaging a in scam that defrauded retailers out of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. Buchanan allegedly bought and returned nearly 200 video games from local retailers starting in October 2006. Buchanan’s major fault: retailers began to notice that the boxes he returned contained homemade game discs.
Buchanan reportedly would purchase games at retail, remove the game disc, create a fake disc by printing a label onto a blank CD, and then repackage the blank disc in the original box using a heat gun. By returning these fake games to stores, Buchanan allegedly racked up $23,178 in refunds to his credit card and sold the game discs on eBay for roughly $19,562.
Buchanan is formally charged with three felony counts of theft by swindle for obtaining credit on fraudulent merchandise at local Target, Wal-Mart, ShopKo, and Kmart stores.
After being tipped off by Target loss-prevention, Buchanan’s mother was also formally charged with a single felony count of theft by swindle for allegedly helping her son with his plot.
Should’ve stopped at $10,000, greedy bastards. When you get greedy, you get caught.
That picture is amazing.
Also…stupid people. I mean he had a good thing going but he should have used fake accounts and what not.
Or at least bought some pre-paid credit cards.
hahaha smart kid. Mecha’s right.
Jesus, how long and often was he doing this? Wouldn’t the stores notice that every game the dude bought he returned “unopened?”
I’d think they’d catch him for his odd habit of NEVER OPENING ONE OF THE THOUSANDS OF GAMES HE WOULD NEED TO HAVE PURCHASED to rack up that much money. Retailers are just as stupid as he is, sheesh.
I agree, B-Rad, that seems pretty darn shifty.
Even a WalMart employee should be in-the-know enough to realize that when a dude returns his 6th unopened game that he just purchased, something’s going on.
Oh, and @Mecha… amen, brother.
That is pretty shifty
That’s actually pretty smart, but you would think they could tell the difference if the packaging was opened.
Sometimes people disgust me. This is one of those times.
$20,000 worth is like… 300 plus games. Wow
That was pretty well thought, his mistake was staying too much time in the same place.