posted
I mean, that's obvious, right? It's getting stuff for free, and you can't argue with that shit. A lot of people - almost everyone? - on here is well into downloading stuff off torrents, burning CDs and that kind of thing which is basically shoplifting for fucking gaylord pussies. So I thought I'd take it oldschool and start a thread on the "80s TorrentSpy", shoplifting. What's your experience of it, do you still do it, did you ever get caught, what's stopping you, and how would you go about it if you weren't afraid of the consequences?
Pinching Fings
History
I don't think it's any secret that I used to steal porno mags when I was eleven. My method for this was pretty simple. I wasn't tall enough to reach the top shelf in John Menzies, so I would stand on the bottom shelf, grab a handful of magazines and bring them down to the level of the computer mags. Then I'd do a circuit of the shop, come back round to the porn, and if it was still there, surreptitiousl slip it inside another magazine. Then, after another wander, I'd come back, flick through the computer games mag, slip the porno inside my coat (this was the eighties, so an elasticated waistband would stop it from dropping to the floor), and make a big show of putting the games mag back on the shelf.
Success
Actually pretty high, for a method that I thought out on the fly one dark December. I managed to steal an awful lot of porn for about two months using this method, but I think my problem was that I kept hitting the same shop over and over and over again and eventually got caught. That was a pretty scary moment, although there weren't any repercussions. It takes a lot to prosecute a crying 11 year old for stealing porn, i guess. Also, I gave my friend Corin's name, address and phone number as my own.
Modern Day Methods
So anyway, obviously that was just a pre-teen phase I was going through, but I still give a lot of thought to - you know - taking things. The challenge is a lot greater now, with better shop security and the stakes are higher because I'm now old enough to be sentenced. Still. The two key methods I've come up with over the last couple of years centre around misdirection. I've seen a few attempts (other people) go wrong since I've been living in Croydon, and made some mental notes. It's pretty much impossible to get away with it on your own these days; you need an accomplice. Even so.
Method One
I have to say this one is the simplest, and consequently the most credible, and works best in big stores like Virgin, and HMV. You need two guys, one white and one black. The scuzzier, more crimilicious the black guy looks the better, conversely the nicer, smarter the white guy looks the better. You can see where this is going. The white dude does the lifts, sneaks them into his coat. They both get to the exit at the same time, the alarm sounds and the black guy panics and sprints off. White guy does nothing, just ambles off. The store stuff chase after the sprinting black guy in the hoodie, who actually has nothing, has done nothing. This does, of course, rely on the fact that you don't get noticed while you're nicking the stuff, although you'll find that most shoplifting revolves around this premise.
Method 2
Basically similar, though here your accomplice is outside the shop. As you sprint through the barriers and the alarms sound, you collide with your mate, handover the goods, get to your feet and keep running. Although here it's not so important to remain unsuspected in the shop - even if the store guards are onto you, they don't do anything until you try to leave - it does rely on really good sleight of hand. Worth a punt, though, if you haven't got any black friends.
So!
Over to you. Tales of shop lifting to pass the last few hours this Friday alongside any methods you've come up with. If you do describe your methods, I'll give them a go over the weekend and let you know how they went. Have fun!
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posted
Not only am I too morally pure to steal, I'm too scared. I almost admire the crims for being so brazenly brave.
My mum has a lovely story of how when I was very little, I used to go to birthday parties and, er, appropriate the presents that were for the birthday girl. I don't remember this at all, my mum just delights in telling it to my friends. So maybe this instilled the righteous fear of theivery into me.
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posted
I nicked fags from the Lo-Cost supermarket where I worked by putting them in pants, socks, etc. Before that I nicked fags from the newsagents when I did my paper round. That's it. I was never caught, and I've never done any shoplifting from client side. I didn't enjoy thieving, I just wanted fags.
[ 17.11.2006, 10:26: Message edited by: Jimmy Big Nuts ]
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posted
My sister got caught the first and last time she shop lifted (a penny sweet) and folded like a poker player holding a duece and a seven. The irony was, that I was at it all the time and never got caught. 2 techniques spring to mind from later stage lifting - firsly I would stand at the counter and ask a question about a magazine or comic I knew that the shop didn't have - engaging the keeper in a clear, eye contact, confident manner. All the while I would be slipping whatever was in reach into my jack sleaves (normally chewing gum, but sometimes, if they turned to maybe look at the log book for comics or something, I'd get other goodies in reach). the other was, with a group from school, before the days of 'only 2 school children at a time' signs, we would storm into a shop and scream loadly, grab what we could and run out. We only did this a couple of times, partly because we were shit scared of getting caught, but mainly because once you've eaten five bags of wotsits and still have another five left, it's pretty boring really.
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posted
My shoplifting career lasted approx two weekends. One 'spree' involved putting a purple mascara into the back pocket of my stretch jeans, in Stevenage Boots. The other involved just picking up a hair clip in Miss Selfridge and walking out with it. I nearly sweated to death during both daring raids, and never used either the mascara or the hair clip as I felt too guilty.
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posted
As a child I also used the old hide-porno-inside-other-magazine technique, however I used to then pay for the magazine/newspaper with the porno inside. The first time I did it - with a copy of Titbits - I felt so guilty at having swiped it that I went back to the shop the following day and slipped it back onto the top shelf when the assistant had her back turned. From that point on I simply went to the Pakistani-owned newspaper shop around the corner where, upon being successfully served buying a copy of Razzle (along with Special Brew every weekend from then on), I remained a loyal porn/alcohol-purchasing under-age customer.
Edit: Oh - I did get caught nicking a rubber when I was 10, from the same shop that I swiped the Titbits magazine from a few years later. My Nan found it in my pocket when we got home, so she took me back to the shop and made me apologise and give it back. The guilt and shame was unbearable.
posted
In my student days I nicked two or three books from the university bookshop. I felt really bad about it, because books have to be the baddest thing you can steal, really, surely, right? Obviously I didn't feel bad enough not to do it, though.
My method was simple, but was later finessed by a friend when I got too chicken-shit to do it anymore. I would go into the shop with a pile of my own books and folders and what have you, amble about a bit, take a book down, glance at it briefly before placing it on top of the pile of books I had brought in to the shop. I would then pick up another book from the shelf and spend a good while perusing this one, possibly setting down my pile of stuff on the floor so I could flick through with both hands. Then I would put it back, with a look on my face saying "hmm.. good book that, I really should get it... I might come back later, definitely one to consider...", then pick up my pile of books and stuff from the floor, rearranging them clumsily as I did it so that the incriminating item was now in the middle of my pile, and walk out.
These days with magnetic tags and all that it wouldn't work, but at the time it was all too easy.
My friend enhanced this method by writing her name in the book once it was on her pile in her arms.
Nicking books is terrible, but the exhilaration was pretty ace. As the poet Bender said: "Being bad feels pretty good, huh?"
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posted
I just remembered a girl called Sharon Something from school who had a great technique- she would take a selection of bras into changing rooms, and substitute her manky old one for a nice crisp new one. Once the old one was bundled up into the cardboard pack, I guess it was unnoticeable. If they still sell bras in packs, rather than on hangers, that could still be a winner.
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posted
That's still swapping rather than shoplifting, strictly speaking. Makes your friend like a less glamorous Noel Edmonds, really.
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quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: If they still sell bras in packs, rather than on hangers, that could still be a winner.
Marks and Spencers do, but I think they also have a policy whereby any item that has passed within four inches of a woman's erogenous zone must be destroyed by means of fire.
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posted
Also: buying a computer game on cassette, recording it, taking it back, getting a new one. Same with recording an LP and then taking it back "cos it's scratched".
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posted
Back in the days before beep-beep barriers you could I remember just walk into Debenhams. stroll to the record dept and load up on albums and then just walk out through the main doors with an armful, they paid very little attention in the very early 80's to security..
Biggest thing I ever shoplifted, and in hindsight the excuse of I was really drunk now seems pretty poor, but the biggest and most expensive thing I ever shoplifted was a brand new Marin mountain bike.
In honesty it was probably less shoplifting and more breaking and entering.
We (a mate and myself) were walking back drunkenly from a nightclub at 2.00am-ish on a foggy night in Portsmouth when we passed the 'specialist' cycle shop, we looked in the window and said how much better it would be if we could cycle home instead of walk (5 miles or so)... Anyway, Paul said he'd hold the door handle down so it was open and all I had to do was kick it and we'd be in... Ii didn't think we would be, so I did and we were...
NO ALARMS !!
I grabbed the first bike I saw. which was locked to about 30 others which all came crashing down around..
Paul grabbed one of the two Marin’s from the window – UNLOCKED !
quote:Originally posted by Dedalus: That's still swapping rather than shoplifting, strictly speaking. Makes your friend like a less glamorous Noel Edmonds, really.
Hey, she wasn't my friend!
Lol@Darryn. I wonder how that would go down on Dang's cycling forum- I mean it's enthusiasm for bikes, but at what price?
Oh, I've stolen stuff from pubs, when drunk. That doesn't count does it? I've got quite a few nice tealight holders in this manner.
Actually, I've just remembered stealing a metre long cardboard Santa cutout, with him saying "ho ho ho", from Tesco when I was a student. It was to decorate our house. It's not like Mr Tesco needed it more than me.
Maybe I am a crim after all.
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posted
From the age of about 16 to 18 I used to make about twenty or thirty quid a day shoplifting books from WH Smiths or Foyle's and selling them to bookshops in Notting Hill. I stopped when I got nicked. There was no real method, just an air of absolute confidence and a very large sports bag.
I used to nick cassettes from HMV. Hundreds of cassettes, literally. Not all at once, obv. And we (my friends and I) put the Dungeons & Dragons shop in Notting Hill out of business we robbed so much from it.
I trained my little sister and her pals up, too. In Hamleys.
posted
what would the irony have been, naughty girl?
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Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
posted
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: I just remembered a girl called Sharon Something from school who had a great technique- she would take a selection of bras into changing rooms, and substitute her manky old one for a nice crisp new one. Once the old one was bundled up into the cardboard pack, I guess it was unnoticeable. If they still sell bras in packs, rather than on hangers, that could still be a winner.
Marks take them out of their boxes now and hand them to you. [i]Rumbled/i].
I nicked the usual studenty stuff (signs, glasses, ashtrays) from pubs but I had a more sophisticated scam going on to feed an English Literature students need for books. The local shoplifter drank in the pub I worked in. In exchange for free beer and the odd slipping of a fiver, he would go to Waterstones and lift books for me. I made him lists. Most of the classic literature and critical texts on my bookshelves were procured by this method.
I don't feel too bad, but I have no soul. And at leas I didn't break into a shop and rob a bike.
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drunken stealing! i ripped an american football helmet off the wall of the chicago rock cafe in cambridge. for maybe three seconds i was hanging off the grill at the front, little legs waving in the air, weeee, it came off in a cloud of cheap paint and plaster. i shoved it up my jumper like a little baby bulge and it has been used on many an occasion for breakdancing competitions. (the kind of breakdancing competitions i used to take part in at 3 in the morning).
i have never stolen anything else, absolutely nothing, never ever ever, because stealing is wrong and god doesnt like it.
*deep breath* This doesn't really count as shoplifting. More: fraud. Oh god, I'm so ashamed of myself. Shall I divulge and have the eyes of TMO cast upon me? What the fuck ever, I was young an impulsive. I use to work for a computer games company. We did mail out. Now the system was simple and they taught us how to do the most very basic of system changes. However, after being there for a few months I realised that I knew the program for ordering and customer services inside out. The trick was to maintain a customers account. For example, one that had never had a single problem and wanted to cancel their account. You'd keep their account number for a month and if they hadn't contacted you again, go into their account create a new address (your own) and order what you wanted. The order was generated immediately. You then just change the details back to the old address and then wait a week and flag the item as returned. The account would only show that you had created a change of address twice and the chances of someone looking through it were exactly the same as the chance of a customer calling up complaining about an account they had shut down happily a month previously. I feel guilty because it wasn't like the company had a chance. There was just absoloutely no risk and I thought the justification for theft was that you could get caught and it your cunning versus their perception. Not me. I still feel guilty about that actually. Fuck.
[ 17.11.2006, 11:09: Message edited by: New Way Of Decay ]
posted
janes addiction? wrote a song? called 'been caught stealing'? that was the on the album i was going to nick? yeah?
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
I used to nick stuff from the newsagent that my dad used to send me (10) or my brother (12) to in order to get his 5 Hamlet cigars. The shop was basically two shops knocked into one with a couple of archways between the two halves and the till in the front of the one on the right. At this time there wasn't much CCTV about so it was quite easy to grab stuff from the usually unattended half of the shop unnoticed. Since they sold me and my brother cigars without question even though we were obviously preteens, I didn't feel as though they had much moral high ground.
I also used to nick makeup from the local chemist which was in the precinct by the big supermarket. Again it was just a case of casually dropping something into a handy pocket whilst perusing a selection.
The only other bad thing I did (other than recent CD copying/ripping and the odd torrent) was at university when I stood on my calculator, which I'd left on the floor in my room, and cracked the LED display and bust it. I bought an identical replacement one from WHS, initially with the intention of being completely law-abiding. However, like most students I was perpetually skint, so I fairly immediately had the bright idea of cleaning up the old one, putting it into the plastic holder from the new one, repackaging it in the bubble wrap and the box, and returning it for refund saying it was broken and I didn't want a replacement thanks I'll have the money back. Free calculator!
I haven't nicked anything since because I'm all responsible and grown up these days.
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posted
I did quite a big insurance scam which involved getting a non-existent bag nicked at Gatwick airport. Dead easy, but it did involve going through the whole rigmarole of reporting to the airport police that I'd had a bag pinched, and sitting there in front of a copper as he writes down a fraudulent report of something that hadn't happened. Handily the stolen bag was full of everything I owned that I happened to have a receipt for, which when coupled with the police report meant I had a pretty watertight claim. and they coughed up the money in a few weeks.
The insurance office was next to the university bookshop.
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I hope the police aren't reading this thread. All they'd have to do is type "shoplifting is cool" into Google and they'd find a whole load of written confessions, including one from the website owner himself. I assume they'd hand it over to the Cold Case department.
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Shoplifting anything worth having nowadays is pretty much impossible. I feel very sorry for the younger generation.
I just remembered another infraction. Only did it twice. Once in Soho and once in Carnaby Street. 1)Half a dozen spotty casuals amble into a posh knitwear shop, 2)simultaneously grab as many eye-wateringly awful v-necks and cardigans as they can carry and then 3)run like fuck. 4)Sell contraband at school. Well, all the contraband except for the fetching salmon pink Ellesse cardigan.
posted
Not a shoplifting story really, but when I was younger I used to find it funny to go into Virgin records, split the plasic cover open on an album sleeve and take out the security tag that was inside, you know the ones that set off the alarms at the door when you go through them.
Then prowl the shop looking for a prime candidate to slip the tag into the bag of..
And then watch them looking totally freaked out as they pass through the doors and all alarm hell breaks loose..
If I'd been a bit smarter I could have wandered out with all the untagged albums while security were going through some casuals bag looking for stolen goods.
quote:Originally posted by Black Mask: And we (my friends and I) put the Dungeons & Dragons shop in Notting Hill out of business we robbed so much from it.
No honour amongst Level 14 Orc Thieves. I do remember that we salved what minuscule pangs of conscience we felt on his announcement that he was closing down by agreeing that he was 'probably a pervert'. Which, in retrospect, he probably was.
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
hey, does one get anything for 3k posts these days? a badge? a pat on the back? i casually tripped over this momentous number this afternoon whilst talking about boys in parkas or nicking lippy or something.
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posted
When I was 16 or so, my friends and I would go into Victoria's Secret and steal bras and other things (slips, corsets, whatever.) I walked out of there one day wearing 6 bras. Including my own. For a 16 y/o, I had some great lingerie.
We figured out that as long as you didn't carry a large bag or backpack, you weren't likely to get caught.
posted
Just thought of something else A and I did at ages 20 and 21 (me being older).
A friend of mine worked in a bed and bath type store and she told us to stop in and pick out anything we wanted, that she had the perfect scam. So, A and I wander around, putting the most expensive down pillows and duvet in our cart. Then an entire Classic Winnie the Pooh bathroom set and so on. Ended up with 17 items, probably worth $3-5000.00 (Seriously, everything we picked out was like the top of the line). Well, we go to ring out, and said friend has a price tag stuck to her hand, and as she is ringing up our items, she's actually using a .99 cent price tag. Our total came to $17.00. Needless to say, she never did it again, because we freaked her out by what we bought.
She did say to get whatever we wanted though.
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But then again don't we all ?
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