Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Moore said this tactic is actually not uncommon; some people think that whoever calls the police first won’t get charged. It didn’t quite work out that way in this case. When the police arrived, Moore said, the women presented altered state identification cards. “On the back is a magnetic strip and she had mutilated that. And there was a scannable barcode” that had been scratched to be unusable and one of the sisters had “marked it up to change the letters and the numbers.”

That prompted the police to re-review the video. Afterward, they concluded that a shoplifting charge would stick, because the two sisters had walked past the final POS station without paying. It was then that Katurah Petty said that she was pregnant (she wasn’t) and that her water had broken (it hadn’t, but the lack of pregnancy pretty much covered that).

Police took her to the hospital, where she refused to let the medical staff examine her. But, Moore said, she was a good enough actress to convince the medical team—and the police with her—that she was indeed about to give birth. The police let her go home, as she refused treatment, fearing that she could deliver in jail.

Meanwhile, police removed the car the pair had driven and discovered computer monitors and three Avery sticker labels, cut and shaped to match what Wal-Mart uses. Moore said the material discovered would typically be used to fabricate Wal-Mart receipts and then have the barcode match those numbers. This system was prompted by Wal-Mart’s efforts to match receipt numbers with the barcodes of products being returned, Moore said.

The next day, Katurah Petty met with her parole officer. (Why a parole officer? It involved a Louisiana conviction for possession—with two co-defendants—of marijuana. Specifically, 30 pounds of marijuana. Petty was the driver.) She told her parole officer that she had never been pregnant and that she made it up to get out of going to jail.

Another boring day at Wal-Mart loss prevention.