A lot of attempted reaching out and touching someone going on. There's been another big cell-phone bust, this one in Michigan:
Around 1:00am August 11th three men purchased cell phones from the Wal-Mart store on M-81 near the corner of M-24 in Caro. Wal-Mart places a limit on the number of cell phones that can be purchased at once, that number is three. The three men allegedly bought 80 by purchasing them three at time so that an alert wouldn't be triggered by the cash register. They also paid cash.
As seems to be the case in these stories, a clerk called the police. The same three faces eight times in a check-out line would raise my suspicions too.
Don't some Wal-Marts have self-check-out machines?
I've never seen a regular Wal-Mart with a self-check lane. Their Neighborhood Markets (grocery stores) do, but they don't sell the Trac phones.
Posted by: Jeff H at August 11, 2006 03:33 PMIt would be easy enough to limit the number of items a self-checkout could process.
There are two sides to this particular coin. Fight the fight and stop the sale of these types of phones altogether or just give up and create a terrorist express lane. I believe we already have some of those at our borders, so a retail version should work out too.
Posted by: tfhr at August 11, 2006 08:29 PMAt first I didn't think Wal-Mart had them, because the one near me doesn't. But when I googled the terms, I see that some of the stores do. I've seen them at Home Depots, but I checked and they don't sell tracfones.
This case, and one in Texas, (don't know about the California and Ohio ones) had the cashier calling the police. If they used self-check-outs, that would circumvent our last scrap of defense,which is a suspicious citizen.
They'd have to put in a program that flagged those purchases.
Posted by: Donnah at August 11, 2006 08:45 PMHow about a program that flags Islamic males aged 18 - 65? Maybe I'm just a little disgusted by the details of this latest plot and I say "a little" because we've been there before, so this isn't new. But I'm a LOT more disgusted by our continued tolerance of Hezbollah, Hamas, et al, (heh - just saw the irony in that "et al" device) and the fund raising they do in this country and around the world. These guys and most of the Islamic NGOs and "relief" agencies amount to little more than terrorist support cells and at the very minimum, the money they make here goes toward killing us abroad.
So I guess I'm asking if radio collars would be OK?
Posted by: tfhr at August 11, 2006 11:48 PMThey were found with ~1,000 phones...and at $20.00/ea thats a lot of cash, especially for 20 year olds.
I'm idily curious as to who is funding their little road trip.
Implanted RFID and GPS ankle braclets for the win.
Posted by: Gmac at August 12, 2006 12:14 AMThe claim that these "upstnding citizens" did nothing wrong is questionable to say the least? Where did they get their "$20,000 seed money" for this enterprise? The claim is they have done this to make money. I'd like to see their quarterly tax statements for their past ventures. I hope at the very least they are held for tax evasion.
Obviously buying phones is not a crime. Buying phones and selling them to people who whish to do us harm is.
Posted by: Stephen Carmona at August 14, 2006 01:11 PM