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VP of Palo Alto’s SAP Arrested in LEGO Bar Code Scam
Monday, May 21, 2012
By Lisa Fernandez and Kris Sanchez
A San Carlos software engineer is charged with four counts of felony burglary.
An executive at a Palo Alto software giant was charged Monday with four felony
counts of burglary, after authorities said he allegedly made his own bar code
stickers, switched the tags, and then bought boxes of LEGO at Target stores for
huge discounts.
Thomas Langenbach, 47, who lists himself as the vice president at Palo Alto’s
SAP Labs Integration and Certification Center on his LinkedIn profile, is
expected to be arraigned Tuesday in Santa Clara County Court.
“This probably happens more often than you’d think,” said Mountain View police
spokeswoman Liz Wylie. “But this is the first time we’ve ever had a case like
this.”
NBC Bay Area went to Langenbach’s multimillion dollar San Carlos home on Monday,
but no one answered the door, despite people being home. A representative from
SAP in New York confirmed Monday that Lagenbach is employed at the company and
declined further comment.
Langenbach was arrested May 9, and posted $10,000 bail hours later, jail records
show.
Supervising Deputy District Attorney Cindy Hendrickson said Monday that internal
Target security spotted something awry with Langenbach’s purchases from their
stores --that’s three alleged burglaries from the Mountain View store on Showers
Drive and one from the Cupertino store on Stevens Creek Boulevard over the last
month or so.
Wylie, of Mountain View police, said Target security had captured Langenbach
performing the “ticket switch” on camera, and had been onto him because the
company pays very close attention to LEGO sales.
“LEGO are very popular and expensive,” Wylie said.
Langenbach was formally charged with four counts of burglary totaling seven
boxes of LEGO worth about $1,000.
When police searched his home, however, Hendrickson said they found “hundreds
and hundreds” of LEGO boxes inside. They also discovered that since last April,
he had allegedly sold 2,100 LEGO items totallng about $30,000 on eBay using the
handle “tomsbrickyard.” Inside Langenbach’s car, Hendrickson said, were 32
pre-made barcode stickers.
Hendrickson did not charge Langenbach for anything more than the four
burglaries, as she said investigators are sifting over the evidence to determine
what has been stolen and what might legitimately have been his.
Langenbach’s modus operandi, Hendrickson said, was to create his own
sophisticated bar code stickers, and switch the tags at various Target stores.
Those bar codes were for a much cheaper price. So, for instance, Hendrickson
said that Langenbach bought a $279 box of Millenium Falcon box of LEGO for just
$49, and he bought a $90 Anakin LEGO set for about $35.
In a statement sent to NBC Bay Area, Target stated the company “takes incidents
of this nature very seriously.” Target declined further comment.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Langenbach has been with the company since
1988, and holds a degree in computer science and business administration from
Berufsakademie Mannheim, Germany. SAP headquarters is in Germany. SAP is a
“market leader” in enterprise application software, according to its website.
And its acronym stands for Systems, Applications and Products in Data
Processing.
This is not the first case of a LEGO bar code scam. In 2005, William Swanberg
of Reno, Nev., was arrested in connection with stealing hundreds of thousands of
dollars worth of LEGO sets from Target after switching the bar code labels on
the toy boxes. The company at the time estimated Swanberg stole up to $200,000
of LEGO taken from their stores in Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California.
The LEGO sets were then resold on the Web. In that case, too, Target
investigators uncovered the scheme.
Source:
NBCBayarea.com
-end of report-
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: VP of Palo Alto's SAP Arrested in LEGO Bar Code Scam
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| (URL) Tech executive's Lego bar-code scam was extensive, police allege More details are emerging in the case of a Silicon Valley software executive accused of using fake bar codes to buy massive amounts of Lego sets. Police allege Thomas Langenbach, (...) (12 years ago, 29-May-12, to lugnet.mediawatch, FTX)
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