Thief made over £150,000 by stealing trousers and claiming refunds

Mail Online UK ^ | 9-11-09

[blueglass]

A thief made over £150,000 by stealing expensive pairs of trousers from department stores, a court heard today. Zimbabwean Mandla Ngwenya made the huge sum by leaving stores with trousers on underneath tracksuit bottoms and conning refunds. A judge at Teesside Crown Court branded him a liar and a devious professional criminal and ordered him to pay the full amount of money back .

Judge Roger Scott said of Ngwenya: 'He is a proven liar. I don't believe a word he says. I have in front of me a devious professional criminal. I think very little of him. He's a grade zero witness. He told Ngwenya, 36, he must pay the entire £150,889 in six months - or be jailed for 27 months.

[blueglass]

[RichInOC]

1. Steal trousers.

2. Sell trousers.

3. Profit!

[blam]

A Black male? I’m shocked!

[Vaquero]

You wouldn't want me trousers to fall down, would you? ...

[thecodont]

I’ve seen and heard of people trying to pull this “clothing return” scam at Nordstrom (U.S. department store).

[blueglass]

They need to put those ink tags on every piece of clothing. it’s expensive, though.

[Dr. Sivana]

That would make him a quadrillionaire in Zimbabwe.

[LukeL]

Here in Wisconsin 15-20 years ago at Kohls department stores a group of criminals were buying TVs off the shelf and taking them home and carefully opening them, taking the TVs out and then putting bricks into the box and resealing it. They would then return the box to the store for a full refund and either sell or pawn the TV.

Now all electronic items have that barcode the clerk scans at the time of the sale.

[canuck_conservative]

£150,000 ?! That’s like $300,000 !!

How many pants do you have to steal to reach that total?

The store didn’t notice after, say, $20,000 in merchandise went missing???

[Ronin]

The smart thing would be just to deport him back to Zimbabwe. There is absolutely no way he is going to make any restitution. Throwing him in jail will just waste taxpayer money.

But, of course, this is the new England, so doing the smart thing is automatically rejected.

Not that we are not far behind.

[Moltke]

Judge Roger Scott said of Ngwenya: ... He's a grade zero witness.

No, Judge Scott, (how did you ever manage to become a judge anyway?), he's not a witness, he's the friggin' DEFENDANT. Do you even know the difference?