Fairbanks police offer reward for Wal-Mart television thief
Published Thursday, November 13, 2008
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Stumble It!FAIRBANKS -- Fairbanks Police are offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of a man who was seen on surveillance cameras at Wal-Mart stealing a 32-inch Sony Brevia flat screen TV valued at over $600 on Nov. 1.
According to Fairbanks Crime Stoppers, the young, white male entered Wal-Mart and headed straight for the electronics department where he put the TV in his cart and walked out of the store.
According to parking lot surveillance, the man put the TV in the back seat of a white or silver four-door sedan and drove off.
Anyone with information regarding the crime is asked to call Investigator Dan Gibson at 450-6549 or Crime Stoppers at 456-CLUE.
Callers will remain anonymous and could be eligible for a cash reward, the press release stated.
Community Discussion
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Video Link???
The guy should turn himself in for the $1000 then pay for the Sony,+$400.
Where was the "greeter" checking receipts?
No video link, but found a flyer on the police station website that his photos.
http://www.ci.fairbanks.ak.us/department...
Thieves SUCK!
Thanks DonB99705!
NEWSMINER, pay attention...too often the public is asked to assist apprehending someone with only a vague description. If photos are available, please share them.
MrsS
How can this happen? I get stopped at the door for the beeper thing going off when my bottle of vitamins wasnt demagnetized right. Also, whats up with those people stealing over a thousand dollars worth of stuff from Fred's? Why do you think you can get away with such things in this day of video use?
Why is the reward 400 dollars more than the item stolen?
He did get away though. He will definitely be caught.
LOL, Mackie.
Your welcome MrsSaenz. And I agree...an appeal to the public for help in catching a crook ought to have some sort of photo at the very least. I hope they catch this thug. I think he and the likes of him should just get out of town. I can't speak for everyone, so I won't say "we," just that "I" don't feel this type is welcome here!
It shows him on the cell phone as he exits. Also the last picture...is that his car that is driving or is he loading in the parking lot?
Come on FPD....how hard is it to cross check cell phone activity with registrations on a car?
I couldn't figure out from the photo which was his car either.
He was just mad he didn't get the PFD and therefore couldn't afford a new tv like the rest of alaska.
maybe this guy is responsible for the bank robbery and bomb threats too!
Perhaps he wasn't actually speaking on the phone...just faking it, so that the "greeter" would not want to interrupt his call and therefore wouldn't ask to check his receipt. Just a thought.
Yeah, i bet it's the same group, eh? They're gonna take the bank money and blow it on kegs and then go watch Sunday football on that crappy little 32" TV. Real winners, these guys. LOL
Left handed cell call @ 2:11:13 Ouch!Jail time!
the way I see it he will turn it in at another store and go buy drugs with the money he gets for the tv.
Which leads us to......Cocaine Alley! Crime solved,Good work fellow posters.
why isn't wal-mart putting up the reward? oh yeah, the tax payer will pay either way.
B***s, it's just a big nasty "box-store" right? WHO CARES!
people whine about the Wal-Mart being there in the first place,
then they whine when the place gets robbed, let em keep the thing.
It's probably not the worst thing the poor degenerate has done anyway.
.....but I sure wish I knew who this loser was tho, I could use a new gun or two for a reward (I'd probably even buy it @ "Wally-World"),
oh well...theres a reason why I don't associate with/know of such trash.
hahaha - I bet Sam Walton is turning in his grave..............for having such low quality cameras.
Serves them right - low priced items - equal low quality images.......hahah
Are they sure they have the description correct. We think he could be either a white male, or a light skinned native male? Go look at the police link.... Shoplifters make me p.O'd; it makes stores have to raise their prices and act nasty to the rest of us.
hey SWEET71, maybe the veh belonged to someone else, maybe the ro didn't own a phone, maybe the ro had sold his veh and the title wasn't transferred yet, maybe just maybe if you looked at the pictures you would realize the walmart cameras are to crappy to pick up the li plate number, also don't you think that FPD would have released the plate if they had it?
Come on Sweet71...how hard is it to figure out?
also maybe i am missing something but the release says that he is driving a white / silver 4 door sedan and i don't see anyone " loading " anything into a car matching that description, it looks pretty self explanatory to me. i don't where all the confusion is coming from but now it is confusing me... :)
That silver car is a Kia Rio. I'm sure there are only a handful of those around. *note sarcasm*
Anybody remember reading Fahrenheit 451 in high school? This conversation reminds me of the climatic scene.
Graceless, there is a person walking behind a black vehicle towards a white car and a silver one and white one driving. I never said they could see the plates, please read what I said and not read more into it. However, if it's the silver car that is the getaway car, it's not HARD TO PUT THE VEHICLE'S MAKE AND MODEL, now is it?
Have too much caffeine? RELAX.
sweet71 i recall you saying ... "Come on FPD....how hard is it to cross check cell phone activity with registrations on a car?" so that tells me that you think the pd knows the li plate number and consequentley the ro? correct?
On registrations....it has make, model and color. Not hard to put in that information on a computer and get a printout of vehicles matching that description, hence the comment of cross-referencing with cell phone calls.
Never once have I said license plate.
I'm with aframe. Where were the control freaks that man the door? I went in there on a rare occasion and bought two small items. They were in a bag and the receipt IN MY HAND along with my change from the purchase. Some woman who could barely speak English stopped me at the door. She asked to see my receipt. I showed her the receipt and informed her that the buzzer did not go off so why was she stopping me. She said that the buzzer doesn't always go off. Then she proceeded to detain me for five minutes while she stared dumbly at my receipt. Now, I'm all for random checks and I realize you can never be too careful but seriously? I do not look like a criminal. I do not act like a criminal. I had vitamins and chewing gum in my bag. Finally after about five minutes of this crap, I snatched my bag from her hand and told her to call the cops if she thought I was stealing and promptly left.
And someone just waltzes out with a big tv. Too funny. And the cops offering more than the tv is worth as a reward??? Again, too funny.
So the pd is gonna check all the veh matching that descriptions then get a warrant for all those cells then check all the times and towers the calls hit and BINGO they have the thief! Is that what you are saying?
Vitamins and chewing gum and what else LSmith jk
Yeah, the door checking is ridiculous. Sams Club, Costco, and the like get away with it by including it in your membership terms, but I refuse to shop at any normal store that checks receipts as you exit. Do a better job of catching shoplifters in action, and spend less time harassing your paying customers.
They can't legally prevent your from leaving the store, unless they're going to accuse you of shoplifting. Since a receipt check cannot prove you've shoplifted they're unlikely to actually prevent your from leaving.
Here's a great story about what happens when you ignore the receipt checkers at best buy. http://www.die.net/musings/bestbuy/
Those stores should frisk people, you would be surprised
I always set off the alarms with one thing or another, and no one comes around searchiing my stuff. I usually stand there for a second too see if anyone is going to check my bag or anything, I usually get a "happens all the time" I can see a TV walking out the door, no problem. I bet they will be checking now.
Walking out the door time 2:11:13
Parking lot time 2:03:39 Gee! clock time must be wrong?
Graceless, I would think that would be a lot cheaper than spending $1K on the reward. We don't live in Anchorage with 300K people living in the greater area....we live in Fairbanks. I'm not complaining they are asking for the public's help, but a little footwork might go a long way.
I think a lot of the crime goes on in Fairbanks because they know the police can't or won't do anything about it. A family members truck was stolen, joy riden in and then dumped off the lookout at Hagelburger. All leather interior...easy to get a good set of prints off it and there were prints all over the windows. They did nothing about it. A great deal of the crime in this town could easily be prosecuted with a little more effort.
Over the years that Wall-Mart has been open in Fairbanks , I have seen many wrappings in the men's bathroom , some in the waste cans , some in the floor , and in the commode area . Probably at the end of the week the T.V. is small change , compared to the overall total that walks out the door unpaid .
Who knows maybe this idiot is the same one that robbed my house last week - oh wait, no, he stole from Wal-Mart, didn't use my credit card (like the thief that ripped me off) and than shopped at wal-mart and got away with it! It seems the checkers can't be bothered to look at the credit card being used. Thank goodness for credit card fraud investigator's who told me exactly what time the $600+ was charged to my card! Now I can see if these purchases were also caught on tape.
A friend of mine was incredibly annoyed by the Wal-Mart receipt checker, and after a little research found out that legally you can tell them no and walk off. You don't have to stop, and legally the receipt checker can not make any physical action to stop or detain you from leaving the store.
Gee, it's no surprise Walmart was duped. This is what happens when a big monopoly becomes overly stingy, and does everything in their power to make money off already underpaid citizens. They won't hire cashiers, and if they do, good luck finding one that can help you. They set up self checkouts so that they save even more money. Why pay people to work?! Hence, nobody around to notice a man....stealing a friggin' giant box containing a boob tube.
What angers me is that I pull my hair out looking for items that i need, I spend my hard earned money, and then....I'm responsible for bagging my own items. However, I will say, due to Walmarts disregard for hiring polite and personable people, I would rather use the darn self checkout. Heck, I'll spend the extra dough and shop at Freddy's.
stormrider, that is a great link. Thanks. Good for that guy.
Reminds me of getting something from Sears.
Name, rank, and serial number stuff.
Years ago, I asked the guy, "Look, do you want my money or my phone number?"
He said just give me any number for the computer.
It has been explained to me since, but I rarely go to Sears. Anyway, their sales generally suck.
Sweet71, so true. Remember last spring when that girl got her laptop (and other stuff) ripped off from her car right before finals?
She got her boyfriend and some family or friends, and tracked those suckers down, boy!
When the article came out about them being caught, (and involved in a much bigger Anch-FAI car-ripping-off scheme), the cops told it like they had done the work and the tracking.
All the cops had to do was come, after the girl and her bud told Freddie's security the deal, and they detained the thieves and waited for the heat, and load 'em up.
I don't totally blame our cops. They could do more work, but the main focus of their job is carting off drunks and breaking up fights. They don't have the time to worry about things like investigations or gang crime~
they don't have the manpower either~
Truth be told, the cops are being pretty helpful at this point in trying to find out who it was that took my stuff. I'll never see any of my jewelry and such again I'm sure but so far I've had a pretty good response from FPD w/regard to trying to track them down.
Maybe it was a blue light special?
The beauty of Wal-Mart is that you can stuff as many things as you like under your shirt, top them off with a pillow to give your waist the "natural" look, and waltz right out the door. You'll just look like a normal Wal-Mart customer with that bulging belly. The greeter wil never be the wiser.
If the television thief had tried that, he'd have never been noticed. No TV is as large as the average Wal-Mart customer's gut.
Alright, Dr. C, I've been refraining from responding to you. For example, your voter's guide or whatever it was!!!
But this is too funny!
You know they'll probably vaporize us for this. But, having had a daughter or two, or...
We sure have, uh, umm, noticed the clientele and their, uh, well stocked apparel for their, ummm, well supplied figures.
And, OMG, that huge women's underwear is, well, freakishly fascinating! My girls and I gaze at it in awe...
I guess there's nothing better to prevent theft than a security surveillance camera with NO ONE WATCHING!! Gimme a break! If they won't hire someone to sit and watch what's going on during store hours, then they should eat that money. I can't stand thieves. Had there been someone watching he wouldn't have made it out of the parking lot. How do we know an employee didn't give it to someone? If that's the case, then the employee should pay for it with his job, time and money. Anythings possible nowadays. Could you imagine how much faster theft could be if they put in a roundabout at the front doors?
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sweet71 My truck also was stolen this summer at the drag races, no prints were taken and it didnt even hit the paper, truck fliped over and $1,300 shotgun was stolen. Hurry up, lets find this stupid A** TV! GIVE ME A BREAK
AS A LAST RESORT, I shop at Walmart. I'd rather pay more and shop with Safeway and Fred Meyers than shop at Walmart,>>>>>EVER.
Good for the thief, however, crime is way up everywhere here.
Be careful in parking lots folks.
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