Games By Matthew Humphries Jan. 23, 2014 9:00 am
A Nashville man decided to carry out a robbery at a GameStop store in Madison last week and successfully managed to get away with the goods he wanted as well as a large amount of cash. But it’s not the actual robbery that’s surprising here, it’s the way he went about selecting the items to steal.
I’m still trying to decide if this thief is clever or dumb, but he phoned the store before robbing it to pre-order the items he wanted for collection. In this case an Xbox One and $200-worth of games. Thinking that the guy was a legitimate customer, the goods were bagged up behind the counter for convenience when he came in to pay. That same guy then entered the store wearing a face mask, pulled a gun, and grabbed the bag he knew was waiting for him along with $600 out of the cash register.
By phoning ahead and placing a pre-order the thief cut down the time he needed to be present in the store to just 3 minutes (clever). But by using his phone it gives the police an opportunity to trace the call back and figure out who owns it (pretty dumb). If he used a public payphone then he could be in the clear, however, his Nissan Versa was caught on the car park security cameras meaning he could be picked up pretty quickly if he used his own vehicle.
To have the foresight to pre-order what you want to steal to speed things up and cut your risk, but then use your own phone and car to carry out the robbery would be quite embarrassing. I’m sure the police and GameStop are hoping that’s exactly what he did, though.
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I’m still trying to decide if this thief is clever or dumb, but he phoned the store before robbing it to pre-order the items he wanted for collection. In this case an Xbox One and $200-worth of games. Thinking that the guy was a legitimate customer, the goods were bagged up behind the counter for convenience when he came in to pay. That same guy then entered the store wearing a face mask, pulled a gun, and grabbed the bag he knew was waiting for him along with $600 out of the cash register.
By phoning ahead and placing a pre-order the thief cut down the time he needed to be present in the store to just 3 minutes (clever). But by using his phone it gives the police an opportunity to trace the call back and figure out who owns it (pretty dumb). If he used a public payphone then he could be in the clear, however, his Nissan Versa was caught on the car park security cameras meaning he could be picked up pretty quickly if he used his own vehicle.
To have the foresight to pre-order what you want to steal to speed things up and cut your risk, but then use your own phone and car to carry out the robbery would be quite embarrassing. I’m sure the police and GameStop are hoping that’s exactly what he did, though.
More...
