I read in the local paper years ago that one could walk into a Walmart and walk out with a free gun and ammo, all one had to do was wait until the sales people were somewhere else, walk behind the counter and grab what they wanted and walk out. Apparently, one person was stopped by a shopper and almost got shot for their effort. Amazing, that these companies will not pay for more people to be working in the site so this does not happen.

I once worked at KMart, and in our town, there was a notorious group of families (or more than one) who would descend on local stores en masse. While some did everything they could to distract the employees (asking complicated endless questions, demanding to be shown merchandise, complaining about whatever they could come up with), other members of their group picked up and walked out with anything they could manage. Being the days before universal surveillance, it was very hard to get descriptions of their vehicles or so forth, and they would alternate which members went into the store further complicating identifying anyone. I suspect some similar operation might be in play.