Amazon.com Shoplifter Caught

15th October 2003

After weeks of investigation, the man responsible from shoplifting from the International Retailer Amazon.com was finally apprehended. The man, Chuck Hankman, was responsible for stealing nearly $150,000 worth of goods from the DVD, Electronics and Appropriately Pocket Sized Goods departments.

Chuck Hankman apparently entered the Amazon.com website and started browsing the magazine section for a good 10 minutes but chose not to take anything from that particular department.

“That was the first clue,” Police Detective Keith Wilson explained to us, “Those annoying people who treat magazine sections like a library are already taking something for free, so are far more likely to be a shop lifter.”

Mr Hankman then proceeded to go straight to the electronics section and bundled several hundred DVD Players into his Shopping Cart. Looking around, he followed this up with a large assortment of top DVD titles before making his escape.

Following his escape, Amazon.com have decided to remove the “Shoplift Items in your Cart” from their purchasing system:

“To be honest,” One of Amazon.com’s press officers told us, “That option was probably a bad idea from the start. I don’t even know why we implemented it. I guess we just wanted to give the customer a more natural experience.”

The Shoplifting option allowed customers to have all the items in their shopping cart delivered to their house for free, and gave them a 30-minute head start to get away from the police. Normally, the shoplifter would be caught immediately, however Chuck Hankman was careful to time his escape at the same time as Amazon’s special offer on Jam Donuts. As a result, he was able to make a quick and speedy exit before Police were even aware of the theft.

Fortunately however, Mr Hankman was eventually caught when he phoned to complain that he had accidentally been despatched 300 Tellytubby Dolls instead of the 5.1 Surround Multi-region 5 Disc DVD Players he had ordered.