Another store theft scheme that's hard to spot unless your security people are awake. This works particularly well at electronics stores, where expensive things are often small.:
buy something. Go home with it.
A few days later, walk back in the store with your receipt. Go get the same thing you bought before. Go to the returns counter, and "return" it with the receipt from your previous purchase. Now you have the money back, and whatever you bought.
Some stores now try to counteract this by putting colored tape on items you bring in the store. That's easy to get around - just take something into the store, get the tape on it, then go back out. Take the tape off, hide it in your wallet, and then put the tape on the thing you get off the shelf.
This might be impossible now at stores like Walmart which are using RFID chips in everything they sell - not sure if the RFID's have a unique signature. But other stores only have the UPC to go by, and that's identical for every like-item.
Had a guy pull this back when I was in high school working at a big box electronics store. He did it for several months until we finally got lucky and someone noticed him walking from the shelves to returns.
And if you're working in a retail store in july and you see a guy in a big winter coat walk in. . well. . . he's probably gonna steal something
You wouldn't believe how many people tried to pull this when I was working store security years ago.
I'm a little confused on how the laptop car alarm sniffer works. If my alarm transmitter uses 900mhz, and a laptop wifi card runs in the 2.4ghz range. . . I don't see how you can get a laptop to listen to the 900mhz, or to transmit at 900mhz. Can someone clear this up?