Ivey Marie Weiss, 49, of Ocala, was arrested yesterday and charged with shoplifting and engaging in a scheme to defraud after allegedly stealing over $160 in items from the Target store in Gainesville.
It's honestly probably kleptomania. It's a serious problem for a lot of people, and there's no way this woman needs to shoplift, she could probably afford everything she steals.
I liked to steal stuff when I was a kid, but when I did, I always felt extremely guilty and gave the stuff back.
What I did was develop a career in IT Security over the last two decades. I can "steal stuff" and get paid to do it. Kind of. (It's not malicious nor is it glamorous.)
I did it to just see if I could. It was 30 years ago. But we stole t shirts or magazines. Nothing horribly expensive. It was "can we get away with this?"
I actually kinda feel bad for this lady. I mean, i know--she works for WF, they're an evil company--so some sort of cosmic justice may apply... but i just can't help but wonder what life must be like when you legit have that kind of disorder. There's no plausible reason for the behavior--even she herself apparently recognizes that. From the article: "When asked why she repeatedly shoplifts when she has a good job, Weiss reportedly said she just didn’t have an answer."
Maybe when your job is to sit in a glass office overseeing a couple dozen cubicle workers and your day consists of using various Microsoft Office products, useless meetings, and answering phone calls, this is the only excitement she's able to get.
Humans weren't meant to be office workers. It's not surprising that some people mentally break, when you look around and most people's body's are broken down.
Something similar happened in Albuquerque recently with a doctor/medical executive. She has a salary of almost $300k a year. It’s unclear what makes people do this - entitlement? Greed? For thrills? I can say though from experience running a small independent retail art supply store, the people who stole from us the most were well-off women who were otherwise good customers. It seemed like they thought they were entitled to a “special discount”, like they resented that we consistently made money from them and didn’t offer special deals.
I'm surprised that more people don't know not to FAFO involving Target. When a company has a lab that's sophisticated enough where LEOs ask for assistance on unrelated investigations, that's never a good sign.
Unbeknownst to most, Target has a top-rated forensic services laboratory that provides forensic examinations, and assists outside law enforcement with help on special cases.
Target and Walmart both declined to comment for this story, but in a press release from 2012, Target said it volunteers to get involved with with “felony, homicide, and special-circumstances cases.” In 2008, a Target spokesperson told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that a quarter of the cases it worked on were unrelated to the company itself.
One thing that any would be shoplifter should take away from this is NEVER steal from Target. Target waits and tallies up what a person has shoplifted until that dollar value exceeds what is required to charge them with felony theft, in Florida‘s case a dollar value greater than 750, and then has that person arrested.
In each instance, Weiss allegedly fills a shopping cart with hundreds of dollars in merchandise, then scans and pays for a few items to generate a receipt she can show to a store associate as she walks out.
It's the bright red lipstick on thin, downturns lips. Also the "oh shit" look in her eyes as she realizes she's completely fucked up her life. No bank will ever hire her again.
She looks like someone trying extremely hard to keep it together. This is unsettling to see because it reminds us how complex and delicate a set of circumstances it takes to keep a person sane.
She committed the cardinal sin: stealing from the establishment. Steal from the working class with predatory financial practices and fees for being poor and they are fine with it; the powers that be have been trying to steal the working and middle class out of existence for years. But she stole from other companies, stupid lady. After a few handfuls of stores they won't stand for it.
The prevalence of kleptomania in the U.S. general population is unknown but has been estimated at 6 per 1000 people, which translates into about 1.2 million of the 200 million American adults.
Kleptomania is thought to account for 5% of shoplifting. Based on total shoplifting costs of $10 billion in 2002, this 5% translates into a $500 million annual loss to the economy attributable to kleptomania.
This loss does not include the costs associated with stealing from friends and acquaintances or costs incurred by the legal system. Besides its grave toll on individuals and families, kleptomanic behavior carries serious legal consequences: approximately 2 million Americans are charged with shoplifting annually. If kleptomania accounts for 5% of these, this translates into 100,000 arrests.