Beating Wal-Mart At Their Own Game

Wal-Mart loves to advertise how they cut prices throughout the store. Their little bouncing smiley-face is always clanging off some price sign and changing the numbers to something more favorable to the consumer. Well, two can play at that game as this guy showed:

Wal-Mart, the world's No. 1 retailer, is well-known for rolling back prices, but one of its customers is going to jail for taking the price-slashing into his own hands, literally.

Police say Paul Joseph Vest, 25, was shopping at the local Wal-Mart Supercenter when he used copied bar-code stickers from a toy car to ring up items such as Xbox games, diapers and fishing supplies at an amazing 75 cents each.

According to the Palm Beach Post, Vest went to the store five times, scanning items which also included spark plugs and car mats in the self-serve checkout lanes. Wal-Mart officials joined Stuart police using video surveillance to snag Vest on his final checkout, March 11.

Facing charges of scheming to defraud, and several counts of retail theft, Vest pleaded no contest to a single count of scheming to defraud, and was sentenced to 10 weekends in jail plus a year on probation, along with a permanent ban from the Stuart Wal-Mart. He will also have to pay $100 in restitution.

You have to give him low marks for ethics but high marks for creativity. With self-service lanes opening up at all kinds of retail stores, you just have to know that there will be a lot more of this kind of activity.