It was the perfect crime. Adel, a 19-year-old Frenchman, wanted to cheat the system, and in fact he did, the problem was that he did not know how to stop in time.
The idea was simple and nothing could go wrong. Adel decided to take advantage of a 'security hole' in the automatic boxes of the Monbéliard supermarket to take a PlayStation 4 as if it were fruit. But what was the security hole? That precisely those automatic boxes do not have a human being that checks that you pay correctly what you are taking. Adel knew it and knew how to take advantage of it.
Monbéliard, like many other supermarkets in the world, decided to implement automatic boxes. You know, those where there is not a human being who charges us and we are in charge of scanning the products and paying there, whose goal is mainly to reduce the workforce and save some money in hiring and salaries of employees.
The difference is that Monbéliard is not an Amazon Go, since in the latter there is a whole artificial intelligence system with cameras and sensors that follow you at all times. While Monbéliard's automatic boxes are that, an automatic system based on trusting that the customer will pay for what they are carrying.
Then, with the above in mind, Adel went to a Monbéliard supermarket last September, went through the videogame area, took a PlayStation 4 and later went to the fruit and vegetable area. Here Adel decided to use one of the automatic scales to weigh the console, selected oranges and the machine gave him a ticket / sticker that described 3.3 kilos of oranges and a price to pay of 9.29 euros.
Finally, the young man stuck the ticket in the console and went to one of the automatic boxes, scanned the console and ready. He paid only 9.29 euros for a PlayStation 4 whose original price was 340 euros.
Everything had gone perfect for Adel, who had left the store without being discovered. Then, the young man thought 'if it worked once, it could work twice'. The bad news is that when Adel went the next day to Monbéliard to try to repeat his masterful move, the police were already waiting for him.
Adel accepted his crime and explained that he had sold the console for 100 euros, and had returned to the store with the aim of buying a console again, selling it and thus be able to buy a ticket to Nice, where he supposedly lives.
The young man is currently facing charges for theft and was sentenced to four months in prison in a correctional facility, five years of ineligibility and the prohibition of re-entering a Monbéliard supermarket.