Is swapping items in a store theft?

Monello

Monello

Smarter than the average bear
PREMO Member
1 navy chief is going to find out shortly. She decided to go the courts martial route instead of non judicial punishment. In a military trial the defendant's lawyer is an employee of the prosecuting side. This may be a case where it's prudent to bring in outside of the military counsel.

A chief petty officer is headed to court-martial next month for allegedly stealing a bottle of Versace body lotion from the Navy Exchange at Naval Air Station Jackonsville.

But Chief Boatswain’s Mate Kathy M. Tonnah’s Navy attorney — Lt. Cmdr. Tracy High — insists her client didn’t steal anything.
Tonnah was perusing $84 dollar gift sets that contained perfume, lotion and shower gel on June 2, High said. She didn’t want the shower gel, so she took the gel out of one gift set and swapped it with the lotion from another set.

Tonnah paid for the modified gift set containing two lotions and was then “confronted outside and treated like a thief,” High said.
The chief was “forced to pay an additional $200 in ‘administrative costs’” after she was stopped, the attorney said.

High told Navy Times that Tonnah’s command tried to send her to captain’s mast for shoplifting but her client “stood on principle and refused to accept nonjudicial punishment for a crime she did not commit, demanding the case go before a jury of her peers.”
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ucmj
 
jazz lady

jazz lady

~*~ Rara Avis ~*~
PREMO Member
Yes. If they wanted you to mix-and-match products, they would have been loose and you then get to pick the items you want. As Auntie said, I would be mad if the set I bought was not what was advertised and specified in the package.
 
itsbob

itsbob

I bowl overhand
Hard to say.. I get what everyone is saying, but if the value doesn't change (think a 6 pack with 3 Pepsi's and 3 Dr Ps.) I really don't see it as stealing.

When the NEX "caught" her they could have explained the "set" and been done with it.
 
L

limblips

Well-Known Member
PREMO Member
The price was for a set of three separate items, she took it upon herself to make it two items. She swapped an extra lotion and felt that since she left a shower gel it was an even trade. Retail does not work that way. She is guilty of theft by deception.
 
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