Re:Extreme couponers were sent to prison in $31.8M fraud scheme
by themodelplumber on Monday October 25, 2021 @06:50PM
(#28994152)
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 (micro) 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.
> 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 (micro) 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.