A Best Buy worker went viral after claiming that he caught a customer attempting to commit fraud.
Dallas (@dallas_ponzo), the worker, posted a nearly two-minute TikTok where he explained what happened. As of Wednesday morning, his video had over 3.5 million views.
Essentially, he said, a customer arrived five minutes before closing. She “grabbed a shopping cart” and “started shopping around,” Dallas recalled. The worker also noted that the shopper, a woman, was “putting high-value items in her cart,” like a Canon photo printer and Polaroid camera. Dallas said that he and his co-workers expected her to “walk out of the building” with them.
@dallas_ponzo The fraud check was fraud checked
♬ original sound – Dallas
To his surprise, she wanted to pay for her purchases. After scanning the customer’s items, Dallas said, her total came out to an eye-popping $497.88.
To pay, she asked whether she could “write out a check.” Upon finishing, Dallas put the check into a machine to check its validity. At first, the machine declined it, so Dallas tried again. Then, the check went through but “wouldn’t process.” That led Dallas to manually enter the check’s information, a move that also required him to call a number in order to authorize the purchase.
Once he called the number, he said, a representative “asked a bunch of questions” about the customer. Then, Dallas was thrown a curveball. “This is a Code 3 and we’re not going to authorize this. I’m sorry,” the representative said before hanging up. When Dallas told the customer this, she asked Dallas to “hold” onto her items so she could go to the bank.
The Daily Dot reached out to Dallas via TikTok comment and to Best Buy via email.
In the comments, a number of viewers defended the customer.
“Sounds like a honest mistake,” one viewer wrote.
“I tried writing a check at Best Buy and [the] same thing happened,” another shared. “Apparently almost all checks get denied at BB.”
“someone with a fraud check would not have gone with those items,” a third viewer said.
What is a Code 3 in banking? According to Telecheck, a Code 3 “is telling the merchant that the transaction contains a significant level of risk markers. These models are very effective in reducing fraud, but they are only predictive, based on information obtained at the point-of-sale and historical data.”
