Making money out of plain packaging

An opportunist capitalising on Australia’s ‘plain-packaging’ laws has stolen $30,000 worth of cigarettes from 14 supermarkets across South Australia and Victoria, according to a News Interactive Network story.

On each occasion, the man has posed as a tobacco company employee to trick supermarket staff into allowing him to remove discontinued stock because of the mandatory packaging changes, police were quoted as saying.

He told staff he would return immediately with new stock but failed to come back.

Victoria Police detectives are leading the search for the man, who first struck on November 8, some time before the December 1 deadline for the new packaging.

The 14 incidents occurred between November 8 and December 3.