Attention Wal-Mart shoppers...

[Ninong]

...when Wal-Mart steals your money, you're out of luck!

A Wal-Mart cashier used customers' checks to empty their checking accounts. Customer complained to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart opened internal investigation. Cashier "left" her job at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart tells customers to get lost.

Davis says when she contacted Wal-Mart about the fraud, the company started an investigation and Mingo left shortly thereafter.

Normally in a case like this the bank would reimburse a customer who falls victim to wire fraud. But because Davis did not discover the fraud until after 30 days had passed, the bank is not required to replace the money and Davis says Wal-Mart will not refund the missing $3,000 either.

When we asked Wal-Mart about refunding the money, all the company spokesperson would say was, "The associate is no longer with the company. Please refer to the local authorities for details."

Constables tell us more arrests could be made in this case, and they are certain there are other victims who do not yet know money is missing from their checking accounts.

Read the full story to learn how your $37 check to Wal-Mart could end up costing you $3,000....here is a better link to the story about the check scam . I realize it's just a blog post by someone named "Tigers Mom," who has apparently never figured out how to hit the 'Enter' key twice in succession to create something called a "new paragraph."

[MyNameIsJoe]

I heard about this a year or two ago.... Now walmart just scans the check and gives the check back to the customer.

Who uses checks nowadays anymore anyway???? time to get a debit card folks...


BTW...That link is to a diff story about a kid who did prank intercom announcement at walmart.

hmmmmm... such a sensitive society we are...

[Ninong]

I heard about this a year or two ago.... Now walmart just scans the check and gives the check back to the customer.
BTW...That link is to a diff story about a kid who did prank intercom announcement at walmart.

Thanks for pointing that out. First, I thought it was a current story because I picked it up just a couple of days ago in a blog, and second, Google messed me up because this is how it still shows up in Google:

abc13.com: Former Wal-Mart employee arrested for check fraud ...
Dec 7, 2006 ... Davis says when she contacted Wal-Mart about the fraud, the company started an investigation and Mingo left shortly thereafter. ...

When you click on that Google link, you get the story about the teenager who make the prank announcement, probably on a dare.

After I read about the check scam in that blog, I decided I wanted to find something a little more authoritative to post as a link and that's why I googled for it. Anyway, here is a better link to the story about the check scam and it looks like it goes back to December 2006.

[Ninong]

I have discovered that virtually all of the links you can find online about this original story lead to the recent Wal-Mart problem with that 16-yr-old kid's prank announcement.

Anyway, here's what happened in case the link I put up above gets messed up:

A former Spring Wal-Mart employee is behind bars, accused of leading a check-fraud scheme that apparently cost shoppers thousands of dollars — and it all goes back to store employees failing to give customers their checks back. [P.S. -- As you can see, that link is messed up, too. It's that way with virtually very story about this online.]

Wal-Mart is one of those stores that uses electronic scanners to process checks, so checks are supposed to be scanned and then handed back to customers. But police say Dazzie Mingo — who, by the way, Houstonist would nominate for Name of the Year if we knew how — would scan checks, then keep them and have them rescanned over and over, increasing the checks' amounts each time. So customers like Pam Davis ended up having far more than they knew withdrawn from their bank accounts — in Davis's case, Wal-Mart employees ran a check originally mad out for $37 five times. "Five times, they changed the amounts each time," she told KTRK. "It was almost $3,000." Officials say Mingo would give the checks she kept to other people, who would use them for Wal-Mart shopping sprees.

Harris County Precinct 4 Capt. Mark Herman said four victims have been identified in the check scheme and police are trying to figure out who others might be. But the victims might have a frustrating road ahead: Davis said she didn't discover the fraud until more than 30 days after it happened, and because of that, neither the bank nor Wal-Mart plans to reimburse her. It'll take a lot of price rollbacks to make up for that missing three

From houstonist.com.

The original reporting was by Jeff Ehling, Dec. 6, 2006, on abc13.com "Former Wal-Mart Employee Arrested for Check Fraud in Spring." However, all links to that story now take you to the most recent Wal-Mart problem with that 16-yr-old kid's prank announcement.

[Ninong]

My point is that I believe that if a Wal-Mart cashier steals money from customers' checking accounts while she is performing her duties as a Wal-Mart employee, then Wal-Mart should be responsible for covering their customers' losses. I don't know if that is what is legally required but I do know that it just makes good sense for the largest retailer in the world to reimburse their customers in a situation like this. On the other hand, Wal-Mart has never been known for doing the right thing.

[returnofsid]

The procedure of scanning checks and returning checks to customer (immediate check verification and withdrawal) didn't exist when this theft occurred. Walmart implemented this policy, nationwide, within the last year, though some stores were "test stores" for this procedure about a year prior to that.

However, an employee acts as an Agent of the business they work for, while on the clock. The Employer (Walmart) is legally bound and responsible for any "Agent" actions. I would imagine that once this action was fully investigated, the EX employee tried and found guilty, Walmart was required to reimburse all injured parties. Unfortunately, since this was almost 3 1/2 years ago, and Walmart has been "in the news," so much since then, finding the complete story may be difficult.

A lil' different, but somewhat related, and hasn't been proven to have actually happened.
Letter warns of check fraud using cell phone cameras at Wal-Mart-Fiction!