SAP VP arrested over Lego scam at Target

I think most of us can never understand what would lead someone to steal items from a store. It's even harder to understand why someone would commit theft when they're a highly placed executive in a major software firm making plenty of money to simply purchase what they want. A software engineer, who is a vice president at the enterprise software firm SAP, was arrested recently in a Lego barcode scam.

The executive is Thomas Langenbach. He was printing out his own barcodes, then going to Target stores and changing the real barcodes with his own barcodes. This scam allowed the man to purchase the Lego sets at significantly reduced prices. The man was caught when Target security cameras recorded him switching the store's barcode for his barcode.

Langenbach was arrested on four felony counts of burglary, and a stash of his own special barcodes were discovered in his car. The police also discovered "hundreds and hundreds" of Lego boxes inside his home during the investigation. It appears the executive was buying expensive Lego sets at huge discounts and then selling them on eBay. The police believe the man sold as many as 2100 Lego items on the auction site for about $30,000. It's unclear at this point how many of those sets he sold or purchased using his scam methods and how many were purchased legitimately.

[via NBC Bay Area]