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An alert employee at the Sears store in Nanuet was able to thwart a scam that, they say, has been carried out all over the Northeast.
Victims have reported being offered discounts on high-end items, such as TVs, by fraudsters posing as store employees, police said.
After handing over the money, they are told to wait in the store’s pick-up area for the merchandise, which, of course, never comes, police said.
In the Nanuet case, they said, a loss-prevention employee picked up on the scam and detained a 30-year-old woman from Cambridge, Mass., until police arrived.
Now charged with possession of stolen property, a felony, is Lindsay Kippenberger, police said.
The victim, a 59-year-old man from Westwood, N.J., told police that he met the suspect in the parking lot of the store and exchanged $2,100 for three Samsung TVs, which he never got.
Kippenberger was arraigned in Clarkstown Justice Court and bail was set at $10,000.
She was sent to the Rockland County Jail and is to appear in court on Monday, Feb. 22.
The discount scam is being investigated by multiple law enforcement agencies in several states, police said.
Police are asking anyone who has information about the scam, or who has been the victim of one, to call Det. Michael Novotny of the Clarkstown Detective Bureau at (845) 639-5864.
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