There are the first judgments qualifying the seizure of things at the self-service checkout as theft and not a fraud – reports the dogmatykarnisty.pl website.
Scan at the self-service checkout
It is about the behaviour of customers who intentionally scan a different product on the self-service checkout than the one actually taken from the store. One of such cases was dealt with first by the District Court in Wschowa, and then by the District Court in Zielona Góra.
A man on more expensive perfumes costing PLN 139.99 stuck a barcode of cheaper perfumes for PLN 12.99 and deleted it at the self-service checkout. In this way, he wanted to “save” PLN 127.
The first instance court convicted the client of a minor fraud under Art. 286 § 3 of the Criminal Code and sentenced him to a three-month restriction of liberty.
The appellate court ( case file no. VII Ka 3/22 ) changed the judgement under appeal, stating that the man’s behaviour only met the criteria of a misdemeanour theft. He considered that in this case “there was no elementary factor in the form of the person whom the accused had to cheat at the time of the act”.
Just as Impossible as to cheat an ATM
The accused “did not mislead any man, did not use the erroneous perception of reality by a specific person, but only used the machine”. The court emphasised that just as it is impossible to cheat an ATM, you cannot cheat a machine in the form of a self-service cash register within the meaning of Art. 286 of the Criminal Code.
Source: Rzeczpospolita
