Edinburgh shop assistant puts £18k worth of stolen merchandise on eBay

An employee of Edinburgh recreational and camping store Tiso has been charged with stealing more than £18,000 worth of merchandise to resell on eBay.

Andrew Pringle, 22, was employed at the Commercial Street branch when items started to go missing between April 2006 and July 2007. Another store employee began to notice Tiso items appearing for sale on eBay in 2007.

Fiscal deputy, Melanie Ward, said in a recent interview on the case: “In June one of the security directors spotted that there seemed to be items of a specialised nature being offered from a seller based in Edinburgh under the names “Climbing-2007” and “Nevis-2006.”

An inventory of the Tiso warehouse showed that the items up for sale online were the same as those missing from stock.

“It was fairly easy to trace him because he used his own bank account” Ward said. Authorities turned to eBay and PayPal, the company which mediates financial transactions online, to track the stolen goods through “Climbing-2007” and “Nevis-2006” to Pringle’s account.

Pringle admitted to stealing the items while in police custody and is currently out on bail until his sentencing next month.

A spokesperson for the Tiso head office in Leith told The Journal that the store “is pleased to see the matter brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

“Tiso waits to see the matter fully resolved next month.”

Items resold by Pringle included hiking boots, walking sticks, and other mountaineering gear. The stolen merchandise comprises an estimated loss of £36,000 in store income. Pringle stands to join the ranks of elite eBay scammers, though the damage that he has incurred may not land him at the pinnacle of audacity.

In January 2008, a Vermont woman, 28, sold fake designer handbags to over 250 people on eBay. The fraud raked in $100,000, resulting in a sentence of 41 months imprisonment.

In October of the same year, an officer at Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey, was caught after stealing over $200,000 worth of electronics from travellers and reselling them on eBay. The attempted sale of a camera worth $47,000 stolen from the bag of a television network employee led to his arrest.

In order to prevent such occurrences, eBay recommends that retail companies enroll in their Partnering with Retailers Offensively Against Crime and Theft (PROACT) program, which aims to detect suspicious employee behavior online and offset theft.