Employee allegedly exploited Best Buy's discount system for months.

Who among us hasn’t used a discount code for ourselves at the POS? Hell, the managers used to share them so they didn’t have to be involved when you took a meal break! Depending on the place, that discount could be 100%, making 99% amateur hour.

A Best Buy employee in Florida was charged with fraud after allegedly using his manager’s code to heavily discount nearly 150 items that he and his accomplices purchased and pawned.

It seems that the manager first started growing suspicious about “strange sales numbers” in December 2024, an ABC News affiliate in West Palm Beach reported. Private investigators traced the weird sales back to a 36-year-old employee, Matthew Lettera, who allegedly conducted 97 discounted purchases for himself and 52 additional transactions for others. Some MacBooks were discounted as much as 99 percent, a local CW affiliate reported. In total, Best Buy lost more than $118,000 from the scheme.

According to a LinkedIn profile that matches Lettera’s information, he started working at Best Buy in January 2020 after pivoting from career training as a chef.

An arrest affidavit from the Palm Beach Police Department reviewed by a local CBS News affiliate alleged that Lettera’s scheme did not start until March 2024, about four years into his Best Buy career as an “experience manager.” A switch seemingly flipped, as Lettera allegedly conducted dozens of heavily discounted transactions that went unnoticed for months, seemingly growing bolder and eventually recruiting coworkers to join the scheme.

    • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgOPMEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Only tangentially related, I was on my way back from my evening constitutional at the brewery last night and happened upon a guy taking down flags for his BBQ truck. Apparently, he’d hoped for business from being by the brewery, but they have their own food truck, so the night was dead. I told him lunch Saturdays and Sundays would be a better plan, because of the ice skating rink next door – and the bowling alley a few blocks away has league end.

      So, in a very Texan move, he asks if I’d like a brisket sandwich. I’m not one to turn down free food, so he gets in his truck and hands me a styrofoam container. After a handshake and exchanging names, I walk back to my van.

      And then experience the best brisket I’ve had in a decade in Texas. And the sauce was somehow even more amazing.

  • Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org
    6·
    4 days ago

    Could you imagine if we paid people enough to live a good life and had regulations to prevent greed? It would resolve a lot of issues lol

    • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgOPMEnglish
      4·
      4 days ago

      Apropos of nothing, I once rented from a company called American Dream Real Estate. It remains the only time I got my full deposit back and a thank-you note for keeping the property in good shape.

      • TehPers@beehaw.orgEnglish
        3·
        4 days ago

        It remains the only time I got my full deposit back

        I found out years after moving out of a place I rented that the real estate company that owned it got sued for a ton for not giving back the deposit to people.

        They claimed it was an extra month’s rent that you wouldn’t need to pay on your final month, except they still charged the final month’s rent.

        And no, we got no thank-you note. That company was ass.