If you’re going to commit coupon fraud, it helps to have assistance from an insider. That assistance also comes in handy when it comes time to pay off your five-figure restitution order after you’re arrested, convicted and sentenced.
Four months after a BJ’s Wholesale Club cashier was ordered to repay more than $60,000 in losses due to a coupon fraud scheme that she and a customer perpetrated, that customer has now been ordered to pay his share as well.
70-year-old Len Roitman of Delray Beach, Florida agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors last week. By paying half of the restitution and completing three years of a pretrial diversion program, he’ll have all criminal charges dropped if he stays out of trouble.
Police caught onto their scam back in May of last year. According to a police report, investigators were called to a BJ’s store in Boynton Beach, after a corporate audit found “an unusually high dollar amount of coupons” were being redeemed at the store. BJ’s traced the transactions to the register run by 20-year-old Justice Buonsante.