Ramsey County, Mann (Fox 9) – Ramsey County has charged five people in a cell phone scheme worth more than ڈالر 300,000 from Walmart, a cell phone service provider and a third-party sales company, Outsourced Sales Leadership, from November 2018 to July 2019. Is.
The scheme involved buying cell phones from OSL at locations inside Walmart stores around the metro. Mainly Walmart’s Midway, Apple Valley, Egan locations.
OSL is a third-party business that sells cell phones and service plans from within Walmart locations. The phone that OSL sells is part of Walmart’s inventory.
According to the complaint, Walmart became aware of the issue in early 2019 when Walmart Global received reports of suspicious cell phone transactions from store officials.
Generally, when a user buys a phone from OSL, he only pays sales tax. The customer pays both the price of the phone and the service plan in monthly installments during the contract period.
Store officials began looking at transactions for five or six new phones and service plans purchased at a time. In addition, many of the phones purchased were defaulting on their service plans.
Consumers were buying phones, often using nicknames they knew they would pass credit checks, and then turn to sell the phone in the secondary market. Sometimes consumers or “credit mules” will use fake identities to buy phones, as stated in the complaint.
Many OSL employees were aware of the scheme, but went along with it. The charged employees either paid 50 50 “tips” to the employee who made the transaction, or because the manager wanted more sales numbers and as long as the customer passed the credit check, he said. That should go through the sale.
The complaint states that between November 2018 and July 2019, OSL employees and Credit Mules made more than 300 transactions.
Ramsey County has charged five people with fraud, burglary, and aiding and abetting theft.