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Calgary man charged with ‘bloody’ store scam involving razors, high-end merchandise

The scam was clever, if somewhat bloody.

A Calgary man is facing charges for allegedly conning retail stores into giving him refunds for things he never bought by claiming the products injured him.

According to the Calgary Herald, police say the man scammed grocery, hardware and department stores out of thousands of dollars by showing up with blood-stained receipts after intentionally cutting himself with razor blades.

The blades were sometimes embedded in shopping carts so the man could claim a sharp edge on the cart had sliced him.

“He was not only committing fraud, he was also posing a danger to the public,” Const. Lara Sampson of the Calgary Police Service's retail crime initiative told the Herald. “With the blood, if they grab the same basket or happen to grab the razor blades he’s implanted, they are also at risk.”

The scam was an extreme version of retail return fraud, which is among the most common types of fraud victimizing stores in Canada and the United States.

American retailers lose billions of dollars each year, much of it after the Christmas season when there's a spike in returns. The U.S. National Retail Federation estimated this holiday season alone cost its members almost $3 million, according to Fox26 News in Houston.

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Sometimes, store employees are part of the scam. Police in the Baltimore area arrested three people, including a former employee of the Nordstrom department store, for allegedly being behind a series of fraudulent transactions, according to the news site PotomacPatch. Searches of the suspects' homes turned up $200,000 worth of merchandise believed to be stolen.

Return fraud is among the top five forms of retail theft, according to the U.S. site CSO Physical Security.

Statistics Canada, in a 2008 report, said fraudulent returns make up 32 per cent of all frauds against retailers by employees and non-employees, with credit card fraud and counterfeit money a distance second at 15 per cent each.

The alleged Calgary fraudster seems to have taken the return scam to the next level.

According to police, he would enter a store carrying a shopping basket or pushing a cart. After loading up with high-dollar items such as kitchenware or bedding, he'd cut himself with a razor blade he held or had secreted in the basket, the Herald reported.

Then he'd smear blood on a receipt found in the store parking lot or from a previous small purchase, Sampson told the Herald.

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As store employees looked after his wound, the man pinned the injury on the cart or on one of the products he claimed to be trying to return.

“He would say, ‘I was opening a box, and it cut me,’ ” Sampson said. “He would act so distraught.”

Perhaps fearful of a law suit, store employees would process a refund even though the receipt was illegible, police said.

Store loss-prevention staff grew suspicious about the pattern of returns over the last month and began tracking the man on surveillance cameras, then notified police, the Herald said.

Fifty-nine-year-old Rodney Arthur Bradt was charged with five counts of fraud under $5,000 and five of mischief dangerous to the public. Sampson said he could face additional charges.