Cape Coral Police arrested a man after stealing from Target twice, using barcodes to make the more expensive items cheaper.
CCPD arrested Jorge Sapuga for allegedly stealing from Target on Santa Barbara Boulevard in Cape Coral.
On January 24, police said he stole $46 worth of items, including coffee pods and shoe inserts, placing a fraudulent barcode over the real one at self-checkout.
It's a trend shopper Anthony Tavares has heard of.
"We're living in an age where we're trying to become more dependent on unmanned machines, but one person can only supervise so much," he said.
On January 31, police said Sapuga did the same thing, stealing $110 worth of Legos.
He used a fake barcode from a cheaper set of Legos to pay for the more expensive ones.
"A box of Legos are in the hundreds sometimes, depending on what you get," Tavares said. "If you go to a self-checkout machine or you don't have somebody to use common sense, the machine just reads the barcode and keeps it moving."
Tavares believes the increased trend of using fake barcodes is only becoming worse with the increased use of self-checkouts.
"You got 32 machines out there and one person watching all 13 during the busy hour," he said. "There's no way they can actually make sure that people are being honest about what they're scanning. This is how a lot of these thefts happen."
Sapuga was arrested for larceny.