The fake coupons thing is mostly straight outta 4chan.
And 2 years ago, this happened:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/internet/fbi-busts-4chan-man-extreme-couponing-098561
There are fake coupons for everything out there nowadays... including for free Xbox 360s, etc. People are dumb...
While most of the Fake Internet Coupons, are pretty Obvious, the Professional Criminals who makes these, aren't...
From my time in AP, I learned that there are groups of Criminals, who do organized retail crime for a living, and use Coupons. The Coupons are a easy method for them, as there able to obtain receipts and are less likely to get caught, or stopped walking out the doors. From the ones I've seen, there typically printed on nice, shiny, somewhat flimsy media paper, and some even have little peel on holagrams.
What'll they'll do is they'll get a car, and try to hit up ever single store up on a interstate, and at bigger stores (like ours) with multiple entrances, they'll do one purchase, and come back in and do another & another. Most of the time walking away with $30-$50 of free merchandise each transaction, and we can't technically stop them because they have receipts for the "paid for" merchandise.
Popular Items for this Scheme were, Electric Razors (the Norelco ones were very popular), Olay Regenrist (the $40 things..), Prilosec (heart burn medication), Neutrogena (pretty much any facial stuff that was expensive), Iams Dog Food, and The Bigger bottles of Tide.
Sometimes on the Fake ones, you can rub your hand over the printed barcode on them, and the ink will smear... Most Companies Like Procter & Gamble, or Johnson & Johnson, would never print a coupon so poorly...
