The drop in stocks of damaged products ended up alerting the managers of the Lidl brand in Baziège, near Toulouse (Haute-Garonne). In this town, details La Dépêche, the distribution group owns huge warehouses covering more than 50,000 m² which process thousands of products every day that go to supply the 80 supermarkets located throughout the great south-west of France. It was in these premises that an employee engaged in particularly lucrative traffic.
Indeed, the employee had become accustomed to recovering damaged items that had become unsaleable in these warehouses, products that were supposed to end their days in the trash. The 49-year-old woman then stored the items at her home before reselling them on the Internet and making ends meet. During the search of his home in Villefranche-de-Lauragais, the gendarmes thus got their hands on 3,000 diverted products, for a value of nearly 60,000 euros.
Tools and household appliances
The suspect stored all kinds of items: food products, tools, but also small household appliances, particularly popular in the Lidl brand. According to La Dépêche, the employee admitted the facts during her police custody and submitted her resignation. She also allegedly admitted to having acted with the help of her companion, a 38-year-old man, also in police custody.
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The two defendants are due to be tried in March 2022, as part of a guilty plea. For the moment the sign Lidl has not indicated whether or not it will claim compensation.
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