
We've all felt that burning desire to own the latest and greatest Nintendo games - there have been far too many occasions where a limited edition release has ruined our bank accounts - but to go as far as stealing games is taking things way too far, right? Shockingly, that doesn't seem to be the case for this Amazon employee.
It has been reported that a 23 year old Italian man, employed at the company's distribution centre in the town of Castel San Giovanni, attempted to steal three Nintendo Switch games before setting off the centre's anti-theft security systems as he was leaving work. Upon searching the man, police discovered copies of ARMS, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Splatoon 2, as well as some other items, that had all been taken from the warehouse.
In total, the products that were stolen were worth €160 and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the man was instantly arrested. At least he has good taste, though, eh?
[source ilpiacenza.it]
Comments (75)
Some people have no morals. And he clearly didn't learn the trick of how to do it right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KHTqt4unso
Just make sure you don't go back afterwards.
Now I want a new New Super Mario Bros game when I saw Nabbit.
Glad he got caught.
This is what happens when you don't level up Stealth.
Those hats tho. I want one now haha.
@TommyTLG I'd prefer to see them try something a bit different and new with 2D Mario. Or just give me Mario Maker.
He should have taken just the game carts
It’s Nintendo’s fault 😜😂
In Japan people form lines to get a hot product, In the West people steal hot products... Joking XD
Just goes to show how desperate people are getting when they want Switch games
At 23 he's probably more foolish than immoral. It is a shame really and it doesn't worth all the trouble he got into for 160€.
Nintendo stole my heart many years ago and never got caught.
These types of news are kinda sad.
Nabbit is appropriate here.
A mistake which bears overwhelmingly more consequence for the young man than could ever be felt by Amazon or Nintendo. Arrest him, yes. But without getting to the root of why this happened in the first place, nobody will benefit from this incident. Poor guy. I feel for him.
This particular Amazon distribution centre in Piacenza has been in the papers for months for the awful working conditions and shifts they force their employees to work in. As a matter of fact, there was a huge strike there on Christmas season, and rightfully so.
Sacking, arresting and publically humiliating a young guy for stealing a grand total of €160 is absolutely horrendous. It's not the guy who should be ashamed.
@Naoiko For who? Nintendo? Amazon?
The corporations aren't damaged here. That young man's life, however, could be badly damaged. He will probably be fired. That means no reference. Which means finding a new job will be really, really hard.
Maybe he needed extra money to support his family? Maybe he stole those games to give to someone he loves, a younger brother who is ill?
Best not to assume you know the whole story before condemning someone.
@JTMnM
This guy clearly rolled a 1 and wasn't a high enough level rogue to have Reliable Talent.
@Yasaal ymYou haven't given much thought to this, have you?
@spizzamarozzi
"It's not the guy who should be ashamed."
Why is that exactly?
@Ernest_The_Crab Hilarious. Let's make light of someone's misery. Very clever analogy, well done for you.
@Nintendoforlife If he has no choice to work for the sweatshops that pass as Amazon distribution centres, can't afford anything, steals, is caught and is humiliated worldwide with a tweet?
Young kids make mistakes. Amazon could have just given a stern warning and moved on, it's not like they couldn't afford it. But no, that wasn't enough. They needed to publicly humiliate him as well.
It's disgusting conduct.
@HappyMaskedGuy he humiliated himself, he was a young fool. you can white knight all you want and get angry at people for making a joke but ultimately it was his own foolishness, you can't protect him from that.
@Nintendoforlife Amazon treats their employees like scum, and this is further proof. In any civil country, a kid caught stealing €160 worth of goods would be given a good old bollocking, maybe sacked but that would be it.
You don't get arrested and go in the newspaper for nicking 3 games. You simply don't. Not in a civil society.
@HappyMaskedGuy if it is true what Spizzamarozzi said he probably got mistreated at work and his superiors were @$$h**es with their emplyees and he just stole things he wanted hoping at the same time to damage those people who mistreated him.
He did something wrong probably for shallow motives but it is very likely that his superiors behave even worse than him and their behaviour encouraged him to do so
@spizzamarozzi @HappyMaskedGuy
1. To address Happy's point, I wouldn't describe a 23 year old man as a "kid". That's the age of a grown man to me, but that's not really important I guess.
2. I am really not well informed on how Amazon treats their employees, so I guess I'll take both of your words for it in this case.
3. For Spizz what was the result of the strike there I'm curious?
4. Where does the whole Amazon humiliating the man come into play? It seems as though he just walked out and was stopped at the door by security on duty. Is that not what happened?
@HappyMaskedGuy Not that long yes.
@Yasaal This occurred in Italy.
I work at one of there warehouse's in AZ. I had to stow away copies of botw, Mario Odyssey, and a Splatoon 2 switch bundle. You'll get caught even if you make it past the security. They have cameras to see who last touched the items that went missing.
GAME OVER.
@Ernest_The_Crab Lol. Needs to level up his pickpocket perk.
Ok, maybe they were a bit harsh on the boy but hell, he stole, he got punished, he was reported on the newspapers alright, it’s not that he had his hand cut off
@Nintendoforlife well, the fact alone that police was involved (the picture in the article was taken at the police station, you can tell by the hats), the story is in the newspaper and we are talking about it means the guy is under public scrutiny. This is basically plain shoplifting, nothing more elaborate than that, and shoplifters do not go in the newspapers unless they nick gold or something.
As for the strike, I'm not sure they reached any significant conclusion as of the latest strike of Dec.20. There has been a lot of coverage on national TV, and before the strike a few journalists managed to sneak in hidden cameras (entering and shooting is highly forbidden in these facilities, for obvious reasons). They discovered that the employees are constantly timed. Basically every time they pick an object, there's a countdown to pick the next, as in a collectathon from the 90s. If they don't pick a certain number of objects from the shelves within a certain time frame, they get penalised. For this, they are requested to "fast walk" (basically run) an average of 12 miles a day. There's also a timer that keeps track of how much time they spend in the bathroom. And this is a tough job where all you do is basically lifting objects. It really must get on your tits after a while, hence the strike.
So yeah, I'm not saying the guy's a martyr or anything, but a multi-billion colossus such as Amazon could have handled things differently without alerting police, press and stuff. I mean, somebody stole my car a few years ago, worth much more than €160 (but not "that" much) and when we found it, it didn't even get mentioned in the local news, let alone in a foreign website of car fanatics.
@spizzamarozzi Theft is theft and it’s universally illegal. Regardless of how you’re treated by your employer, retaliating by stealing is never moral or justified. If you hate your employer, quit.
@Yasaal Too bad this was in Italy, not USA.
Facts are hard.
Isn't Payday 2 nearly with us?
@spizzamarozzi In any industry that I've worked for, I call the police on employee theft. This isn't Robin Hood, it is not justified, and yes, they should be arrested and fired. Other companies deserve to know that this potential hire steals from their employer. Employee theft is far worse than shoplifting, because employees are given access to do far more damage than a potential shoplifter. They might have access to an inventory system, safes, door codes, etc. A clever employee can rob a company for a good while before they get caught, which can affect that locations bottom line and shrink numbers, which in turn can affect performance bonuses of co-workers, hours allowed, etc. He's stealing from more than just the company at that point.
The guy doesn't deserve media attention, but that's the fault of social media. Plenty of crimes are reported in a local paper, but few go viral. That's just bad luck.
They couldn't save up and buy it?
I will never understand why some are willing to lose their job like this.
@frogopus considering he stole 3 videogames worth €160 and not Rolex watches worth 20 grand each, I would say he wasn't the kind of thief who would sneak into Amazon's bank vault to steal all the personal details of Amazon's customers and then re-sell them to the north-korean mafia.
You have to see things in contex dude. Just because somebody, somewhere, might start a new nuclear missile crisis by stealing a slip of paper from his company, doesn't mean this guy would, or could.
As far as I'm concerned this was just a kid (or an adult who is a kid at heart, as Nintendo would say) who stole 3 games from a shelf. Big deal. If he stole 3 poetry books, nobody would have given a flying damn.
@argol228 Clearly you have absolutely no experience of what a difficult life entails.
Spoilers: the world is not black and white.
@TimeGuy That's because we don't know the whole story.
@Tempestryke What if all of their money is spent just plain surviving? Supporting a family? Maybe he planned on selling the games to get rent money? Maybe he was pressurised into it?
We don't know the whole story.
@HappyMaskedGuy You’re joking, right? Never is stealing $180 worth of games worth losing a paycheck.
@Nintendoforlife I'm sure you were totally worldly wise by the age of 23...
Anyone under 25 really is a kid, in terms of their life choices. It's only until that age that we really form who we choose to be for the rest of our lives.
@TimeGuy Not if you don't get caught!
@HappyMaskedGuy
Then he would be less inclined to jeopardize his own job. I'm fairly certain that if your struggling to pay for neccesities, the last thing you'd wanna do is get fired. Especially for stealing.
Granted, we've all done dumb things, but still.
Guys,
This just happened to me on Black Friday this year - ordered a brand new copy of Mario Odyssey from AMAZON GERMANY ( it was strangely cheap 34 euro) and when I received it - the seal of the package was not there and the cartridge was missing.
Of course, i got mad and wrote to their support asking for Full refund and they refunded me.
Bought it from Ebay UK after that - which was brand new - no issues.
@Yasaal It happened in ITALY dude. Why go out of your way to be rude???
@HappyMaskedGuy Knowing there's proven science behind the development and maturity of the adult brain (and its correlation with judgement), I agree with you and this on principle. I do get a bit hesitant when we steer to far from the idea of personal responsibility and knowing tight from wrong. Lack of judgement and foresight is understandable in adolescent and teens. A 23 year old? It becomes a bit tricky.
Now, the one xfactor you touched upon is a person's environment. And I do think context is key. You can definitely make the argument that someone brought up in a more stable environment might be in better position to make more sound decisions that we normally would consider unhealthy or problematic and vice versa. Of course there are millions of.examples to draw from and happening everyday to the contrary. But I agree with you totally that it's probably best to get a full story about something before leaping to judgement. Unless we are talking about really abhorrent behavior(s) or actions.
Giant corporations like Amazon who make ridiculous amounts of money yet underpay their workers and treat them like inhuman slaves are at fault, this is just a consequence of their actions and it's amazon who deserve to be condemned, not the worker who stole from them.
I wouldn't want to pay for ARMS either. But I sure wouldn't be trying to steal it. Where are the morals?
@spizzamarozzi Funny you mentioned books, since my first job was inventory management for a book store. I had an employee slipping books out for a few months and selling them on eBay. Working with the loss prevention group we showed he had stolen about $800, which in my state of the US is a felony. We had someone at the management level, responsible for counting the money into the safe each night, slipping $20 bills in her pocket and writing it off as cash register discrepancies. Over time, she stole quite a lot from the safe. If each store had one of these folk doing things like that, the company would be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. But do tell, just how much money IS it okay to steal? If he was in the US he committed a misdemeanor, so it's not like he's getting locked up, but it's still a problem and should be treated accordingly.
I think that they were wrong to name the guy in public like this... but they probably did it as the ultimate deterrent to future would be thieves. Anybody thinking of stealing from them will definitely think twice now. I would still consider their response to be completely out of proportion, though.
Internet logic = this is Amazon's and all big corporations' fault. Thanks for the laugh, lefties!
@frogopus you're asking me how much money IS it okay to steal? It depends who, why and whence. That's why we have a system based on judges, juries and executioners rather than computers and calculators, right? Of all the possible degrees of theft, this would be pretty low on my list.
The guy stole 3 videogames from the richest company in the universe. Doesn't matter how much you dramatise it, to Amazon the loss equates to stealing a rubber band from the United States Postal Service.
Seeing the photo of the "loot" (three videogames that Amazon probably pays less than 20 bucks each) at the police station is particularly disheartening considering the pictures of loots I am accustomed to usually involve huge piles of money, jewelry, bags of drugs and guns.
And it's a sad picture of our time when a guy who stole 3 videogames makes the news, but a company (Amazon) that has been evading the taxes for over 10 years and notoriously treats their employees like dirt doesn't.
@HappyMaskedGuy There is no excuse for being a thief of video games. It's not like he was stealing medicine for his sick mother. If he can't find a job after this that does suck, but let's be honest here. This guy isn't a little kid. He knows right from wrong. I have NO remorse for people who do things out of greed.
@spizzamarozzi For what it's worth, I've only seen this news here. but I've seen plenty of talk about Amazon in the news (I could cite a boatload of articles here, it was everywhere a couple months ago). And yes the loot picture is silly, but it may be standard practice to photograph any stolen items like that? I don't know.
But criminals justify their behavior all the time: the victim deserves it/I deserve a thing more than they do. Criminals don't like to think that they are in the wrong and the brain can do powerful things to cope with that. Just like you said it's not like he stole a bunch of Rolex's, it's not like he stole bread to feed his family. He wanted video games, probably convinced himself that his behavior was justified, and got caught.
I'm not really looking at the individual though, I'm looking at what happens when a company ignores a lot of small thefts. Chump change on the individual level, significant amount off the bottom line when theft is allowed to run rampant. And just in general, if someone is stealing, you call the police. I did it plenty of times on employees and customers. Part of my team's pay came from whether or not I met inventory shrink goals that were directly affected by theft.
@Yasaal Italy not America
@GravyThief
This is not politics,this is about being a decent human being.No one condone with theft and no one thinks that an adult should not be accountable for his actions.I think they could be less strict and still communicate the right message.
@May_Nyan that's just stupid
@HappyMaskedGuy
lol young kids make mistake? The dude is 23. That is an adult. THAT IS AN ADULT. You know what this person also is? A criminal. A small crime is still a crime, and trying to rationalize it as an act of desperation or love is beyond stupid.
The real mystery is why he didn’t swipe a copy of odyssey as well... maybe he already had one?
@SLIGEACH_EIRE amazon went ahead and filed a name change on his behalf too?
@Socia Defending giant corporations who are very rich but evade taxes and treat workers badly is stupid
@Yasaal It was in Italy...
That's a shame. I hope he is able to learn from this and move on with his life without having the need (or desire) to steal from others. We've all made mistakes in life. I cannot judge a man from two paragraphs on a video game website.
@spizzamarozzi
Amazon is far from the best company to work for, but that doesn't justify committing crimes. Your comment is beyond stupid. The guy is 23, that isn't a kid, that is an adult. There is no company or country that would give him a good ole "bollocking" for stealing. He'd be fired or arrested anywhere and he should be. This wasn't a "mistake" or "accident". He made a choice to not only break a standard policy that every company has but a law that every flipping country has too. He chose to be a scumbag, so any consequences as a resort are on him. Its not like he is going to prison for 6 months, and sadly I'm sure he has far worse on his rap sheet. Hell a interview question just about every company asks is what would you do if you caught a co-worker stealing? Nobody wants to deal with trash who takes from others.
Surprised this is even news. Poor guy took a bet and lost.
It surprising he couldn't afford to buy the games with the big money Amazon were paying him. Yeah right...
The owner of Amazon is worth $100 billion. He made that money on the backs and sweat of his under-payed employees. One little blip and he'll have the cops on you. Nice fella.
I'm highly offended that you would the perfection that's my pic to discuss a robber
#JusticeForNabs
@darthllama and you don't have a clue what you're talking about. There is no debate to be had with you.
Seeing as crime is such a simple problem, does it strike you as odd that it has never actually been solved? No. Because you are basic.
@GravyThief Go back under your crumbling bridge, righty.
@Naoiko You don't know anything about the incident. How ignorant can you be.
I don't like murderers. Murderers bad.
Kid kills his step father after years of sexual, physical and mental abuse.
Is he just a murderer? Or was his crime the product of circumstances outside of his own choice?
You have to learn to use your own brain. It will serve you and those you care about better in life.
He should’ve just ordered the items from the website, called customer service a few days after receiving them, and pretended he never received them.
it was in the news because amazon wanted to make an example of him.
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