Zara shopper jailed for taking tags from new clothes she’d bought and putting them on old ones before demanding refunds
A ZARA shopper has been jailed for buying clothes, putting the new tags on old items and demanding full refunds. The woman, known only as Tania M.A, from Zaragoza, Spain, worked “meticulously” on the tags to restock her wardrobe for free. The 32-year-old has been sentenced to six months behind bars for with continual fraud. […]
A ZARA shopper has been jailed for buying clothes, putting the new tags on old items and demanding full refunds.
The woman, known only as Tania M.A, from Zaragoza, Spain, worked “meticulously” on the tags to restock her wardrobe for free.
The 32-year-old has been sentenced to six months behind bars for with continual fraud.
She has also been banned for life from Zara shops in the Aragon region.
A court heard she would go to different shops in the city, buying a range of swish new garb.
She would then take the tags from the new clothes and put them on old items she had at home.
The woman would then return to the store, asking for a full refund, and using excuses like claiming the item didn’t fit.
The judge sentencing told the court the woman worked so hard she even knew which bar codes corresponded with which colour of clothing.
WHAT IS RETURN FRAUD
Return fraud takes place when someone abuses the return policy in order to gain money or merhcndise.
There are many ways this crim ecan be comitted including:
- Renting – buying goods for a short period of time, with the intent of retuning the item.
- Reciept fraud – using reused or stolen reciepts to return items for profit
- Retuning stolen merchandise – shoplifting with the objective to return the items for full price
- Employee fraud – getting help from an epmpoloyee to return stolen goods for full retail price
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And she would never ask for refunds in cash, as it would require a manager to authorise and they would have a “greater knowledge of the stock, [so they could] detect the returned item didn’t correspond to the tags”.
Local news reports have claimed she ran the scam so many times over 15 months, staff became suspicious and reported her for fraud.
The judge said: “The fact that both the interior and exterior tags matched and were precisely placed on clothing of similar colour shows the fraudulent mechanism and desire to benefit, so in that way, she renewed her wardrobe at no cost.”
