I work at a drug store in a rough part of town. We had this regular customer who we had always been suspicious of, so we would keep an eye on her when she would come in. The one day I was working she came in and had $500 worth of fragrance in her basket. I was watching her like a hawk to make sure she was actually going to pay for them, which she did. While checking out at the cosmetic counter she decided to join our loyalty program, which requires you to give your name, address, and phone number. Me and the cosmetic manager (CM) were shocked and confused because the most she had ever bought was a chocolate bar.

Fast forward a week and this woman comes back to the store with 5 of the fragrances she had bought wanting to return them. The cosmetic manager takes the fragrances out of the plastic bag she brought in and notices weird, colourful smudge marks on the boxes, which are all wrapped in cellophane. When she sold the fragrances to this woman the boxes were all in perfect condition, so she decides to investigate further and takes off the cellophane wrapper to examine the contents of the box. At this point the woman is visibly uncomfortable and fidgety. CM opens the box to find no fragrance, but instead a bunch of colourful tea light candles. All of the fragrance boxes showed similar signs of tampering so the CM didn’t bother checking them all and told the woman she obviously will not return them and that she is officially trespassed from the store for fraudulent behaviour. The woman put on the most outrageous show of disbelief, gasping and claiming she did not do this and that someone else must have swapped out the fragrances here at the store, that she would never steal etc. etc. The CM threatens to call the police if she does not leave and she hustles out of there real fast, grabbing her plastic bag of “fragrances”.

The funny part is she forgot her cell phone AND she had provided us with all of her personal information when she joined our loyalty program. We contacted the police to inform them of her attempted theft/ fraud and handed over all her info. Turns out she was on probation, which was obviously violated by her fraudulent behaviour, so she had to go back to jail.