America's Biggest Retail Sales Team Fraud in History

Former Pilot Flying J president sentenced to 12​​​​​​​ years in prison, fined $750K
Mastermind behind retailer's massive rebate fraud scheme
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered former Pilot Flying J President to serve more than 12 years in federal prison as the mastermind of a five-year fraud plot to grow the firm's market share.

Senior U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier also ordered Mark Hazelwood to pay a $750,000 fine in addition to spending 150 months behind bars.

"The motive was hubris - his competitiveness ... his desire to capture more market share for Pilot," Collier said. "The defendant improperly took it upon himself to use the Pilot name and reputation ... This degree of commandeering ... the court is not aware of any reported case where such a situation has happened.

"Mr. Hazelwood abused the trust of Pilot and the trust placed in him," Collier continued. "The participants (in the fraud scheme) laughed and joked about it. They used extreme and offensive language. They used Pilot's email ... cellphones ... financial management system. They talked openly of this criminal activity ... He violated the law on a constant and repeated basis for half a decade."

Collier is allowing Hazelwood to remain free through November while the U.S. Bureau of Prisons determines in what facility he will be housed. He will remain under conditions of house arrest imposed after his conviction in February.

Hazelwood was convicted after a four-month trial of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and witness tampering.

He was the highest-ranking member of Pilot Flying J who was convicted in the plot. Two subordinates were convicted of varying crimes alongside him, and 14 others pleaded guilty. Two were granted immunity. Pilot Flying J's board also admitted criminal responsibility. knoxnews.com

Read our timeline of events and coverage of the Pilot Flying J scandal here.
 

EEOC Sues Dollar General For Sexual Harassment
Dollar General violated federal law when it subjected a store manager to a sexually hostile work environment, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit announced Tuesday.

According to the suit, within a week of Dollar General hiring an assistant store manager for its Rock Hall, Md. location, the store manager began sexually harassing her. The store manager frequently made crude comments about the woman's appearance and made sexually charged innuendoes, according to the suit.

The store manager is also alleged to have repeatedly subjected the assistant manager to unwelcome touching, including once grabbing her head and forcing it to his crotch while making a sexual innuendo, rubbing her shoulders, and grabbing her blouse, ripping it.

The EEOC said that after the assistant manager complained to Dollar General management, they transferred her to its Chestertown store, which added travel and working complications to her daily commute. Dollar General refused to return her to the Rock Hall location.

The assistant manager was, according to the EEOC, compelled to resign in 2016, based on Dollar General's inadequate response to her sexual harassment complaint. cbslocal.com

Samsung board chairman, dozens of others indicted for hampering union activities
Lee Sang-hoon, Samsung Electronics Co.'s chairman of the board, and other executives were indicted Thursday for hampering labor union activities at its after-sales services affiliate. The prosecutors charged 16 former and incumbent officials from Samsung Electronics and Samsung Electronics Services without physical detention, as they announced the result of their five-month investigation into South Korea's richest conglomerate over violation of labor laws. yonhapnews.co.kr

Father/Son Duo Charged With Falsely Labeling Squid as Octopus
Defrauded grocery stores in New Jersey and Massachusetts over 3 years
A federal grand jury indicted two Long Island corporations and their owners for their scheme to falsely label seafood that was later sold across the country. The indictment accuses Roy Tuccillo Sr., 58, and his son, Roy Tuccillo Jr., 31, both of Jericho, and two of their Westbury food processing and distribution companies, Anchor Frozen Foods Inc., and Advanced Frozen Foods Inc., of importing giant squid from Peru and marketing and selling it to grocery stores as octopus.

The indictment alleges that for over three years the defendants fraudulently imported, processed, marketed, sold, and distributed over 113,000 pounds of octopus that was actually squid. justice.gov

In Legal Limbo, Cannabis Retail is 'Fueling the Grey & Black Economies'
What are the cannabis retail applications? Today, a medical cannabis dispensary is half pharmacy and half jewelry store. Based on the state and location, the definition of "medical" varies. I've seen both white lab-jacketed employees fulfilling prescriptions and hipster budtenders telling you which strain and delivery system will alleviate what symptoms or conditions. For everyone whose pain and discomfort has been greatly alleviated, the crossover to recreational dependence is unavoidable. Like so much of modern retail, we need clear and transparent point-of-sale materials that educate. For example, look at the marketing history of selecting the right mobile phone, how to use this skin crème correctly and what gluten-free really means.

The cannabis stores I've visited tend to be standalone, class-three retail locations. Mainstream landlords are not yet comfortable with cannabis tenants. The look and feel of the store-even in locations across the street from each other-can be very different. One driving factor is security. Another is convenience. Although legal in many states, cannabis is essentially still a cash-based business. Because U.S. financial institutions are required to comply with stringent anti-money laundering statutes, banks at present are refusing to work with cannabis retailers. This creates problems, in particular, for retailers needing to clear credit card purchases through normal banking channels.

This is one business that fuels the grey and black economies. The typical transaction is over 40 dollars. Behind the glass casements and wall displays is serious security. Unlike the jewelry business whose relationship to both law enforcement and the insurance industry is well defined, the cannabis industry at every stage-production, processing and sale sits in a yet-to-be-defined nexus. therobinreport.com

Amazon debuts new '4-Star' brick-and-mortar concept in NYC
New store sells items from its website rated 4 stars and above
Amazon is opening a new store this week that sells items from its website rated 4 stars or above, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday, making a bigger push into bricks-and-mortar retail following its acquisition of Whole Foods and the gradual rollout of its cashier-less convenience stores.

The store is set to open this Thursday in New York's SoHo neighborhood, on 72 Spring Street. The company said Amazon Prime members will pay "the Amazon.com price" when they shop there. An Amazon spokeswoman said the store is permanent, not a pop-up location, as some of its shops - including one that sold Calvin Klein merchandise in SoHo last year - have been before.

The new store in SoHo is unlike any shop the e-commerce giant has rolled out before. Amazon currently has a handful of bookstores across the U.S. and is starting to open more of its cashier-less convenience stores known as Amazon Go.

Amazon said customers will find items like a mini skillet, card games and many of the company's own electronic devices including the Echo Spot and Fire TV Stick, in the new store, called Amazon 4-star. It said it will also include some "Trending Around NYC" items there, which Amazon is able to track on its website.

Amazon said digital price tags in the new store will show how much Prime members are saving, the average star rating and how many ratings a product has received, similar to what shoppers can see on the website today.

Just last week, it was reported Amazon is considering opening as many as 3,000 cashier-less convenience stores across the U.S. by 2020. cnbc.com

Scan-Bag-Go & NFC Cards Coming - Regardless of the LP Consequences
Visa is Driving NFC to ALL Visa Cards ASAP
Visa President said Friday in a Bloomberg interview that they're rolling out NFC to their forty-two million cards as quickly as possible and that the entire payment industry is working together to drive this to market.

Walmart tried mobile Scan-Bag-Go in 150 stores this year and stopped the pilot after just four months saying "few customers used it". According to CBC News, it was challenging for shoppers to bag, weigh and scan items like produce, causing most to head to traditional checkout counters.

Kroger is also investing in the technology to ease the grocery shopping experience with the expansion of its "Scan, Bag, Go" service that the company said it's bringing to 400 stores this year.

It's going to take time to re-train the public on the usage and flow of the process. With even now some customers are still reluctant to even use self-checkouts. Which everyone knows increases shrink and theft.

With a few retailers even saying that they're seeing as high as 30% shrink numbers with scan-n-go. While this has not been officially reported of documented for public review. Even if it's off by 50% we're still talking 15% shrink numbers. A problem that has to be addressed. Because at the end of the day it'll be a common practice in retail regardless and that time may be sooner rather than later. Just a thought
-Gus Downing

Stores and credit-card companies are in an all-out war over fees
Large merchants including Amazon.com Inc., Target Corp. and Home Depot Inc. are pushing for the right to reject some rewards credit cards, which typically carry higher fees for merchants. They are likely to opt out of a roughly $6.2 billion settlement Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc. and several large banks recently reached with merchants and continue to make their case in court, according to people familiar with the matter.

The retailers are trying to end the card networks' "honor all cards" rule, which requires merchants that accept Visa- or Mastercard-branded credit cards to take all of them. If merchants could pick and choose among Visa or Mastercard credit cards, those with the highest merchant fees - and most generous rewards likely would be on the chopping block.

Ultimately, though, the retailers are looking for bargaining power that could help them lower fees across the board. wsj.com

Not your father's POS: What 2019 will bring to payments and mobility
At its core, today's POS devices still function very much like the cash registers of days gone by. They facilitate and record transactions, provide the customer with a receipt and give the retailer a record of items sold. The move to fully digitize transactions happened slowly, starting with changes to hardware in the 1970s and evolving through the introduction of commercial POS software in the 1990s. Transitioning to software-based POS systems allowed retailers to finally integrate other operational systems with payment and sales data, giving retailers access to new store performance data.

Much of the recent progress in POS systems has been tied to integration - connecting transactional POS data to inventory visibility, outbound marketing and unified commerce systems. For omnichannel retailers, analyzing in-store and e-commerce transaction data together helps shed light on channel and chain-wide performance.

But lately, POS systems, and how customers interact with payment systems and mobile devices in the store, have been changing. From "payments anywhere" to mobile receipt printing, retailers are embracing new formats that enable a better customer experience. Here's what we can expect in 2019 and beyond:

  ● Improved touchscreen systems
  ● Mobile or fixed payment kiosks
  ● Portable device-based terminals
  ● All-in-one POS systems
  ● Hardware-as-a-Service  retaildive.com

Report: Papa John's is putting itself up for auction

Home Depot Rolls Out Same-Day Delivery to 35 Markets in US

Disneyland Resort Workers Agree on Increase to $15 Minimum Wage

'Fight for $15' Pins Could Not Be Banned from Uniforms


Quarterly Results
Rite Aid Q2 comp's up 1%, revenue up 1.9%
Bed Bath & Beyond Q2 comp's down 0.6%, net sales flat