[HN Gopher] Extreme couponers were sent to prison in $31.8M frau...
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       Extreme couponers were sent to prison in $31.8M fraud scheme
        
       Author : rrauenza
       Score  : 7 points
       Date   : 2021-10-25 22:13 UTC (49 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
        
       | sushid wrote:
       | "Extreme couponers" is the wrong term to describe these folks.
       | They were coupon counterfeiters. The article even states how the
       | perpetrators didn't use the coupons themselves.
        
       | themodelplumber wrote:
       | Ok, so they were counterfeiting and distributing coupons.
       | 
       | > She trained herself in the different techniques she needed to
       | manipulate barcodes to make these coupons work," said Special
       | Agent Shannon Brill in the FBI release. Talens, who is considered
       | the mastermind of the scheme, would create fake coupons with
       | discounts "near or even over" an item's retail value.
       | 
       | > Talens was paid more than $400,000 in digital currencies such
       | as bitcoin and sometimes "exchanged coupons for stolen rolls of
       | the special paper stores use to print out coupons," the agency
       | said.
       | 
       | She was reallllly getting sucked into it. I had a little taste of
       | that once.
       | 
       | I decided to try extreme couponing some years back, coinciding
       | with extreme weight loss. I ended up losing my last 50 lbs while
       | eating my way through boxes of various name brand chocolate bars
       | that cost me almost nothing. (Well, and a salad here or there.
       | And I exchanged my macros for getting it all over with faster via
       | eat-whatever-you-like CICO)
       | 
       | It was definitely an embarrassment of random riches though. One
       | time I was able to buy about 20 high-end Zebra mechanical pencils
       | for $.10 each. The cashier was stunned and it got a bit
       | embarrassing as she exclaimed loudly and other people looked on.
       | 
       | I'm not surprised people get sucked into this stuff, because you
       | start to realize that you are making away like a bandit. Nothing
       | ever just costs what it costs.
       | 
       | So if you think that's an awesome way to feel, maybe it gets more
       | intense from there, and you realize Photoshop is a thing?
       | Personally I didn't like the excited reactions and making a scene
       | at a store, though my kids and their teachers got some pretty
       | great school supplies out of it.
        
       | runnr_az wrote:
       | So... how does one counterfeit a coupon? Like, the affected
       | stores' systems just accept coupon codes in a format like:
       | "Huggies 99% off?" for any arbitrary product?
       | 
       | I always assumed a coupon bar code just referenced some a central
       | repository of discount options... but maybe that's wrong?
        
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       (page generated 2021-10-25 23:02 UTC)